CHAP. XIV. SMEW'S EGGS. 157 



the lad. Pour exactly matched the four we had secured 

 from his companion ; the other six were the same in size but 

 more greenish in colour, and similar to eggs of the pintail 

 duck which we afterwards obtained. Upon showing the 

 boys some skins of ducks, they at once identified the 

 smew as the duck which belonged to the whiter eggs with 

 the pale grey down. These eggs are extremely rare in 

 collections, and we were not a little elated with our prize. 



At three the following morning we shouldered our guns 

 and went on shore. We had sat up late blowing eggs, but 

 the excitement of finding ourselves in a locality where rare 

 jeggs and birds might be expected, made an attempt to sleep 

 fruitless, and we decided to gratify our curiosity without 

 further delay. We shot a Siberian chiffchaff singing and 

 "chiviting" lustily amongst the pines; and heard several 

 cuckoos. The snipes were drumming on the marshes, and 

 three times we marked them perched high up on trees ; once 

 upon a dead trunk, and twice on the slender dead branches 

 near the summit of larches. These trees were at least seventy 

 feet high. To put an end to all dispute concerning their 

 species, we settled the question by dropping a common 

 snipe with a No. 4 cartridge. It was shot from the top^ 

 most twigs of a lofty larch, just budding into leaf. My 

 afternoon walk, which was a long round on the marsh, 

 resulted in very little. I rose a reeve from her nest, and 

 shot her as she was silently shuffling off. The nest was 

 a rather deep hole upon a grass tussock, lined with dry 

 grass, and in it were four eggs and two feathers. A quantity 

 of green-wagtails were running along the swampy groundj 



