210 ANIMALS AT WORK AND PL A V 



treeless swamp.' It is uninhabited, and for eight 

 months out of the twelve it is covered with snow. 

 Yet this Mr Seebohm found to be the unknown 

 land which drains the Old World of half its bird 

 population, at the time when the temperate and 

 tropical zones are in their most enchanting mood. 

 For love of ' the region of treeless swamp ' the 

 birds gladly turn their backs on the English 

 spring, and fly across Europe to sojourn in what 

 Mr Seebohm terms ' an ornithological Cathay.' He 

 not only discovered the fact, but the still stranger 

 reason which accounts for it ; but his story should 

 be followed without anticipating its conclusion. At 

 the beginning of April, he reached the town of Ust 

 Zylma, three hundred miles from the mouth of the 

 Petchora. The river was fifteen times as broad as 

 the Thames at Hammersmith Bridge, the surface 

 was frozen as far as the eye could reach, up 

 stream and down stream, and the frozen forest was 

 as 'bare of life as the Desert of the Sahara.' Ex- 

 cept one or two ravens, there was not a bird to 

 be seen. 



Suddenly summer came, and with it almost on 

 the same day the birds arrived also. The ice on 

 the Petchora split and disappeared, the banks steamed 

 in the sun ; geese, swans, ducks, gulls, redstarts, wag- 

 tails, pipist, chiff-chaffs, willow-wrens, dotterels, snipes 



