WILDFOWL AND THE WEATHER IN MARCH, 1886. 263 



was full tide, and just before dusk an immense body of 

 Geese were feeding in to the shore. I crept close along the 

 banks under the ice-edge ; the Geese drove in with the tide, 

 and in a few minutes I was, so to speak, in the midst of 

 them. The water was of the deepest blue, and, in the bright 

 rays of the setting sun, it fairly shone with the innumerable 

 glossy black necks and snow-white sterns. But the big gun 

 missed fire. Had she " gone," I must have killed Geese 

 from forty yards up to one hundred. So near was I, I had 

 time to pull out the double-10 from under the fore-deck, and 

 stop a couple of those which had risen within twenty yards of 

 the punt's beam. 



I will now pass on to the departure of the Geese from our 

 coasts. The facts in connection with their withdrawal are 

 quite as interesting to naturalists as those which attended 

 their appearance. For, just as their arrival here has been 

 shown to have coincided with the closing of the North 

 European sounds and harbours, so their departure was 

 precisely, to a day, contemporaneous with the breaking up 

 of the ice in those waters. First, as to the weather : after 

 a partial renewal of the storm about the middle of March, 

 a thaw became general here about the 18th. So rapid was 

 the transition, that the snow in my garden, which lay be- 

 tween two and three feet deep on March 18, had entirely dis- 

 appeared by the 20th. On the 23rd a brilliant crop of cro- 

 cuses appeared ; two days later the grass turned green, and 

 all was summer that a short week before had been Arctic. 

 The temperature rose from 16 on the 9th to 60 on the 

 24th ! On the Continent the thaw was a few days later, as 

 the following extracts from the daily papers show. On 

 March 24 (thermometer here 60 in shade) a telegram from 

 Bremen stated, " Ice breaking up in Weser and at Yegesack," 

 and on the same date the port of Gottenburg was announced 

 to be open, and the first steamer forced her passage through 

 the ice from Reval. On March 25, a telegram from Keval 

 reported, " The Baltic ports are now open for navigation ; 

 ice breaking up slowly." A Stettin report of March 26 

 states, " Complete thaw here : ice disappearing rapidly." 



