88 



1I1&T011X. 



eggs beautiful! magnificent!! just the character of the American bird. An indescribable glow of 

 colour about them. Luclwig had made for them such a box, that even if a horse trod upon it it 

 would not break. He tells me he happened to say that they were most like " Sawintstas ''' (common 

 Thrush), and any one wishing to cheat should try that. The report seems to have spread, without the 

 name of its originator being given ; for in a week or two after the notorious Sallanhi Johan brought 

 a Korwa-rastas (Waxwing), " shot from the nest," with its eggs -the eggs being, as Ludwig at once 

 saw, common Thrush's. The next incident was the arrival of Johan's brother, the still more notorious 

 Niku, but this time with a couple of young birds scarcely able to fly, which he had caught, as he said, 

 out of a brood of five, by Pallas-tunturi. One of these Ludwig has stuffed, and a rare little beauty it 

 is ; the other was much knocked about, and Ludwig made nothing of it. Then a little girl, just ten 



BOHEMIAN WAXWING. 



days ago, brought three eggs from the other side of Nalima (about twenty-five miles from here), which 

 she said were taken on a certain day in July, and were " Kukliaisen." They were undoubtedly Wax- 

 wing, but are very badly blown by her as they were just hatching. At Midsummer, Sardio Michel 

 brought in a small batch of Sidensvans, with the birds (four in number) to each. So now I have a 

 series, though but a very short one, of this rara avis in terris this forerunner of famine, and of 

 infinite value when one thinks of the uncertainty of getting it again. At the same time I should tell 

 you the Sardio lads found a nest which they believe to have been a last year's Korwa-rastas. On this 

 river no one has seen the bird of late years, and very few know it at all. One old fellow, Nalio Aaron, 

 says he saw one north of Nalima in 1853, and another in 1854. Martin Pekka showed the picture to 

 many people in the Sodankyla and Kittila districts, but he could not make out that the bird was at 

 all known, and in all his journeys, when he kept a good look-out, he did not see one ; so that even this 

 year it seems to have come very sparingly and locally just in the district north, east, and south of 

 Pallas-tunturi. In 1853 I told you of a boy, Sieppis Johan, who described a nest of birds he had 

 found some years ago, which, from my interpreter's version, I thought might be that of the Waxwing. 

 The boy, on being shown a skin, said he had never before seen the bird. 



" 'It is a relief to think that I am not bound to go to Russia next spring unless I like it, as I 



