THE SNOW-WREATH OR SIBERIAN CRANE, 17 
thoroughly cleansed and freed from the macerated vegetable 
matter which clung to them. These pebbles were mostly quartz, 
(amorphous and crystalline,) greenstone, and some kind of 
porphyretic rock; the largest scarcely exceeding in size an 
ordinary pea, while the majority were not bigger than large pins’ 
heads. 
I have found similar pebbles in the stomachs of the Common 
and Demoiselle Cranes, but never in anything like such numbers 
as in those of the present species. 
When not alarmed, the White Cranes’ note is what, for so 
large a bird, may be called a mere chirrup; and even when 
most alarmed, and circling and soaring wildly round and round, 
looking down upon the capture of wounded offspring or partner, 
their cry (a mere repetition of the syllables favekhur) is very 
feeble as compared with that of any other of the Cranes (in- 
cluding even Salearica pavonina) whose notes I have myself 
never heard. 
An examination of the trachea of a fine male that I dissect- 
ed on the 22nd of February 1867, at once explained this feeble- 
ness. Instead of a convolution entering and running far 
back into the sternum, there is merely a somewhat dilated bend 
just where the windpipe enters the cavity of the body; and it 
is only after the pipe has divided, which it does symmetrically 
into two very nearly equal tubes, about three inches before enter- 
ing the lungs, that the rings are at all strongly marked, or that 
the tube impresses one as at all powerful. 
I have already noticed that it is not easy to get at these birds 
(possibly due in part to a keen sense of hearing, accompanying 
their large ear-orifices) ; and, as far as my experience goes, 
there is only one way of shooting them with a shot gun. With 
a rifle it is not difficult to get within two-hundred and fifty to 
three-hundred yards of them, at which distance, with a heavy 
"442 match rifle, one ought to knock them over every time. 
The melancholy fact, however, is, that habitually one only suc- 
ceeds in missing them, and thoroughly scaring them witha 
rifle ; sonothing remains but to have recourse to a long single 
eight-bore with B. B. wire cartridge. This will easily knock 
them down up to seventy, or, if a shot tells well in the neck, 
up to eighty yards ; but getting within eighty or even a hundred 
yards of them can only be managed, as a general rule, in one 
way. You obtain from one of the native fowlers the loan of a 
trained buffalo, and enter the water a good quarter of a mile, 
away from the birds, under cover of the quadruped. It has, as 
. usual, a string run through the nostrils, and tied tightly together 
behind the horns. You hold this string where it lies across the 
cheek with the left hand; your extended left arm is hidden 
behind the neck; your whole body is bent, so that your head 
and neck are covered by the buffalo’s shoulders, your body and 
the greater part of your legs, by its body. Only your legs to a 
C 
