75 
NOTICES OF NEW BOOKS. 
Siberia in Europe: a Visit to the Valley of the Petchora in North- 
East Russia. By Henry Srerzoum, F.L.8., F.Z.S.  8vo, 
pp. 803. With Map, and Illustrations by Charles Whymper 
and other Artists. London: John Murray. 1880. 
Untike many tourists who travel with no particular object in 
view but to gratify a love of sight-seeing, or visit an out-of-the-way 
spot only to say they have been there, Mr. Seebohm and his 
companion, Mr. Harvie Brown, had a very definite purpose in 
betaking themselves to the inhospitable and uninviting country 
which lies to the north-east of the White Sea. Their object, 
briefly, was to discover, if possible, the breeding haunts of certain 
birds which, though well known to most of us at particular 
seasons of the year during the period of their migration, have 
hitherto continued to escape observation during the time they 
are engaged in rearing their young. 
Mr. Seebohm and his friend, after reading all that previous 
explorers could tell them on the subject, and carefully studying 
their maps, became convinced that there must be some land 
between the White Sea and the Kara Sea, some wild uninhabited 
waste where the birds in question during a brief summer could 
remain in undisturbed possession of haunts well adapted to their 
nidification. Impressed with this conviction, they resolved to 
journey in that direction, and personally test the value of their 
surmises. Accordingly they so arranged matters as to find them- 
selves early in April at Ust-Zylma, a long straggling village lying 
on a narrow strip of land on the N. and N.E. bank of the river 
Petchora, and between seven and eight hundred miles N.E. of 
Archangel. A more dreary uninviting spot at which to spend the 
latter end of winter, before the ice had broken up, could scarcely 
be conceived ; but our travellers made the best of it, and occupied 
themselves, when weather permitted, with excursions in different 
directions, and with noting and collecting specimens of the few 
birds which, at this stage of their journey, were observed by them. 
Mr. Seebohm thus describes the village :— 
“When we reached Ust-Zylma the streets were covered with a thick 
layer of frozen manure. The yards round the houses were in a still worse 
