THE GREY PLOVER. 



169 



eleven nests with eggs, and also discovered the young in clown. T.ie accompanying extracts from 

 Mr. Seebohm's account will give a good notion of the breeding habits of the Grey Plover : -" We 

 arrived at Alexievka," he writes, "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 Bolshia Semlia of 

 the Russians, the mysterious tundra (a sort of ornithological Cathay) of our little party. We 

 mustered seven altogether, our two selves, our interpreter, Piottuch, and our crew of four, two 

 Russians, a Samoyede, and a half-breed. It was a bright warm day; the wind had dropped, and 

 it was too early in the season for mosquitoes to be troublesome. The tundi'a forms the east bank 



LAPWING. 



of the Petchora ; and we had to climb up a steep cliff (perhaps sixty feet high), a crumbling slope 

 of clay-earth, sand, gravel, turf, but no rock. We then 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 every- 

 where abundance of lakes. . . . We had not walked more than a couple of miles inland 

 before we came upon a small party of Plovers. They were very wild, and we found it impossible 

 to get within shot; but a distant view through our binocular almost convinced us that we had 

 met with the Grey Plover at last. We had not walked very far before other Plovers rose; and 

 we determined to commence a diligent search for the nest, and offered half a rouble to any of our men 

 who should find one. Our interpreter laughed at us, and marched away into the tundra with a ' C'est 

 impossible, monsieur ! ' We appealed to our Samoyede, who stroked his beardless chin, and 

 cautiously replied ' Mozhna.' The other men wandered aimlessly up and down, but the Samoyede 

 tramped the ground systematically, and after more than an hour's search found a nest on one of the 



