Aprit 12, 1883] 
NAT ORE 
561 
‘shores of an island, among whose willows grew an occa- 
sional birch or alder. I spent five hours upon it. Sedge- 
warblers were singing lustily, and sometimes so melo- 
diously that we almost took them to be Blue-throats. 
Soon, however, my attention was arrested by a song with 
which I was not familiar. It came from a bird singing 
high in the air, like a lark. I spent an hour watching it. 
‘Once it remained up in the sky nearly half an hour. The 
first part of the song was like the trill of a Temmick’s 
stint, or like the concluding notes of the Wood-warbler’s 
song. This was succeeded by a low guttural warble 
resembling that which the Blue-throat sometimes makes. 
The bird sang while hovering ; it afterwards alighted on 
a tree, and then descended to the ground, still continuing 
to sing. I shot one, and my companion an hour after 
shot another. Both birds proved to be males, and quite 
distinct from any species with which either of us was 
previously acquainted. The long hind-claw 
was like that of the Meadow-pipit, and the 
general character of the bird resembled a 
the Siberian chiff-chaff, the Petchora pipit, the Siberian 
herring-gull, the Arctic forms of the marsh-tit, and the 
lesser-spotted woodpecker; the yellow-headed wagtail, 
and the Asiatic stonechat. We brought home careful 
records of the dates of arrival of the migratory birds 
which breed in these northern latitudes, besides nume- 
rous observations on the habits of little-known birds. 
“Our list of skins brought home exceeded 1000, and 
the eggs were rather more than 600 in number.” 
The success of the Petchora expedition induced Mr. 
Seebohm to wish to extend his field of operations into 
districts yet further east, when it might be expected that 
some of the few remaining British birds, of which the 
breeding-haunts were still unknown, would be found 
nesting. The remotest eastern corner of Europe having 
been worked out, it was necessary to push on into Asia, 
and in 1877 an excellent opportunity of doing this pre- 
large and brilliantly-coloured Tree-pipit. It 
was very aquatic in its habits, frequent- 
ing the most marshy ground amongst the 
willows. 
“On our return home five skins of this 
bird were submitted to our friend Mr. 
Dresser, who pronounced it to be of a new 
‘species, and described and figured it in a 
work which he was then publishing on ‘ The 
Birds of Europe.’ In honour of my having 
been the first to discover it, he named it 
after me, Anthus Seebohmt. But, alas for 
the vanity of human wishes! I afterwards 
discovered that the bird was not new, but 
had been described some years before from 
examples obtained on the coast of China. I 
had subsequently the pleasure of working 
out its geographical distribution. The honour 
of having added a new bird to the European 
list still remains to us, and is one of the 
discoveries made upon our journey on which 
we pride ourselves.” 
Ten days’ voyage down the river occupied 
in this fashion brought the travellers in their 
boat to Alexievka, the shipping port of the 
Petchora, where the larch-timber felled on 
its banks is laden for Cronstadt and other 
ports. Here their headquarters were fixed 
until their departure for England on August 1. 
But the forty days passed here were by no 
means wasted. The “tundra” on the east 
bank of the great river, frozen hard and 
under snow during eight months in the year, 
becomes in summer a boggy moor covered 
with carices, mosses, and dwarf shrubs, and 
varied by abundance of lakes. Untrodden 
by ordinary man, it was splendid birds’- 
nesting ground for the ornithologists, who 
reaped there an abundant harvest. We cannot go sepa- 
rately into the discoveries here made, which are related 
by Mr. Seebohm in his usual sprightly and energetic 
style, but they are thus summed up at the conclusion of 
his volume :— 
“Of the half-dozen British birds, the discovery of 
whose breeding-grounds had baffled the efforts of our 
ornithologists for so long, we succeeded in bringing home 
identified eggs of three—the grey plover (Fig. 1), the little 
stint (Fig. 2), and Bewick’s swan. Of the remaining 
three, two, the sanderling and the knot, were found 
breeding by Capt. Fielden, in lat. 82°, during the Nares’ 
Arctic expedition, but the breeding-grounds of the curlew | 
We added several | 
sandpiper still remain a mystery. 
birds to the European list, which had either never been 
found in Europe before, or only doubtfully so; such as 
Fis. 2.—Little Stint’s nest, eggs, and young. 
sented itself. Capt. Wiggins, of Sunderland, one of the 
| pioneers of the recent attempts to reopen sea-communica- 
tion with Northern Siberia, had succeeded in penetrating 
some 1200 miles up the Yenesay (Mr. Seebohm’s phonetic 
spelling of Yenisei) in the previous autumn, and having left 
his vessel there to winter, and returned home overland, was 
preparing in February of that year to go back to the 
Yenesay. At a few days’ notice Mr. Seebohm undertook 
to join him in his journey out, wisely thinking that in such 
an expedition it was as well to have the company of a 
gentleman who “knew the ropes,” although he might 
have Jittle sympathy with ornithological pursuits. 
Mr. Seehohm and Capt. Wiggins accordingly left 
London on March 1, and travelled by rail to Nishnt 
Novgorod, a distance of some 2400 miles. Thence was 
|a sledge-journey of about 3200 miles to the winter 
