European Cranes 333 



chill polar soils of Lapland, but the greater number to Russia, North Germany, 

 and Scandinavia. A delightfully entertaining account of the breeding habits 

 of this species in Lapland has been given by Wolley, from which we cannot 

 forbear to quote a few lines. After much searching he found the nest con- 

 taining two eggs in a great swamp, and, although no Cranes were in sight, he 

 concealed himself in a dense growth of bushes, and waited for the return of 

 the owner of the nest. "It was already about midnight; at length, as I had 

 my glass in the direction of the nest, which was three or four hundred yards 

 off, I saw a tall gray figure emerging from amongst the birch trees, just beyond 

 where I knew the nest must be; and there stood the Crane in all the beauty 

 of nature, in the full side-light of an Arctic summer night. She came on with 

 her graceful walk, her head up, and she raised it a little higher and turned her 

 neck sidewise and upward as she passed round the tree on whose trunk I had 

 hung the little roll of bark. She probably saw that the eggs were safe, and 

 then she took a beat of twenty or thirty yards in the swamp, pecking and appar- 

 ently feeding. At the end of this beat she stood still for a quarter of an hour, 

 sometimes pecking and sometimes motionless. At length she turned and 

 passed her nest a few paces in the opposite direction, but soon came in to it; 

 she arranged with her beak the materials of the nest, or the eggs, or both; she 

 dropped her breast gently forward, and, as soon as it touched, she let the rest 

 of her body sink gradually down. And so she sits, with her neck up and her 

 body full in my sight, sometimes preening her feathers, especially of the neck, 

 sometimes lazily peeking about, and for a long time she sits, with her neck 

 curved like a Swan's, though principally in the upper part. Now she turns 

 her head backward, puts her beak under the wing, and so she seems fairly 

 to go to sleep." 



The other species (G. lilfordi] assembles in the same immense flocks in its 

 Indian winter home, and spends the summer in or close to the Arctic Circle. 

 The nests are constructed on the ground in marshy, swampy places, and the eggs, 

 two in number, are four inches long by two and five eighths inches broad, and 

 pale greenish olive -brown blotched and spotted with darker shades of the same. 

 The remaining closely allied forms are the White-headed Crane (G. monachus) 

 of eastern Siberia, southern Japan, and China, which has the sides of the neck, 

 throat, and entire sides of the face pure white; the Black-necked Crane (G. 

 nigricollis) of Koko-nor, characterized by the smoky black head and neck, 

 and the Japanese Crane (G. japonensis), an immense bird fifty inches long and 

 almost pure white throughout, which ranges in summer over eastern Siberia, 

 Korea, and Japan, and winters in China. 



Asiatic White Crane. Quite similar to our Whooping Crane, but longer, 

 and with the hinder part of the crown feathered, is the Asiatic White Crane 

 (G. leucogemnus), which is sometimes placed in a separate genus (Sarcogeranus). 

 According to Hume, who observed it in India, this species differs distinctly in 

 that the windpipe is not convoluted within the breast-bone, but divides into 

 two nearly equal tubes about three inches before it enters the lungs. As a result 

 its notes are very weak as compared with those of any other Crane, being simply 



