46 BRITISH BIRDS. 



discovery of the only eggs of the Grey Plover known to have been taken 

 in Europe induces me to extract the following account of it from my 

 ' Siberia in Europe/ which was written for the most part on the spot : 



When Harvie-Brown and I planned our expedition to the Petchora we 

 thought it was within the range of possibility that we might return with 

 eggs of the Grey Plover. As the migratory birds began to arrive at Ust 

 Zylma we kept a sharp look-out for the Grey Plover as one of the speci- 

 alities of our trip. On the 17th May, the second day of summer, the 

 Golden Plover arrived. We carefully examined every flock that passed us, 

 and never lost an opportunity of shooting a bird ; but as all the migratory 

 birds arrived one after another without any signs of the Grey Plover, we 

 gradually gave up the hope of obtaining their eggs. Nor did our journey 

 down the river do much to reassure us. At Pustazursk (or, as the Russians 

 on the Petchora call it, Gorodok, or the town) we found the Golden Plover, 

 but no signs of the Grey Plover. One fact, however, encouraged us. In 

 the delta of the Petchora we found several species of birds in considerable 

 numbers, and unquestionably migratory birds, which we had not seen in 

 Ust Zylma, and which could not possibly have passed through in such 

 numbers without our having seen something of them. It was perfectly 

 obvious that Ust Zylma was somewhat out of the line of migration, and 

 that the majority of birds intending to breed on the tundra followed the 

 valley of the Petchora as far as the Ussa, and then struck direct across the 

 comparatively flat country to their breeding-places or followed the coast- 

 line. 



We arrived at Alexievka on the evening of the 19th of June, and on 

 the 22nd crossed the river to the land of promise, the Aarka Ya of the 

 Samoyedes, the Bolshya Zemlia of the Russians, the mysterious tundra, 

 which we pictured to ourselves as a sort of ornithological Cathay. We 

 mustered seven altogether our two selves, our interpreter Piottuch, and 

 our crew of four, two Russians, a Samoyede, and a halfbreed. It was a 

 bright warm day; the wind had dropped; and it was too early in the 

 season for the mosquitoes to be troublesome. The tundra forms the east 

 bank of the Petchora; and we had to climb up a steep cliff (perhaps 

 60 feet high), a crumbling slope of clay, earth, sand, gravel, turf, but no 

 rock. We looked over a gently rolling prairie country, stretching away 

 to a flat plain, beyond which was a range of low rounded hills, some 

 eight or ten miles off. It was in fact a moor with here and there a large 

 flat bog, and everywhere abundance of lakes. For seven or eight months 

 in the year it is covered with from two to three feet of snow. Snow was 

 still lying in large patches in the more sheltered recesses of the steep river- 

 banks ; and on one of the lakes a large floe of ice, six inches thick, was 

 still unmelted. The vegetation on the dry parts of the tundra was chiefly 

 sedge, moss, and lichen, of which the familiar reindeer-moss was especially 



