Birds. 



7839 



picture went to Gellivara. * * * I do not expect vvaxwings in 

 that quarter. You can fancy how eagerly i waited for Ludwig to pro- 

 duce the eggs. With a trembling hand he brought them out : but first 

 the nest, beautifully preserved; it is made principally of black 6 tree- 

 hair' (lichen), with dried spruce twigs outside, partially lined with a 

 little sheep's grass and one or two feathers, — a large deep nest. The 

 eggs — beautiful ! — magnificent ! ! — just the character of the American 

 bird. An indescribable glow of colour about them ! Ludwig had made 

 for them such a box, that even if a horse trod upon it it would not 

 break. * * * The next incident was the arrival of Niku, with a 

 couple of young birds scarcely able to fly, which he had caught, as he 

 said, out of a brood of five, by Pallas-tunturi. One of these Ludwig 

 had stuffed, and a rare little beauty it is ; the other was much knocked 

 about, and Ludwig made nothing of it. Then a little girl, just ten 

 days ago, brought three eggs from the other side of Nalima (about 

 twenty-five miles from here), which she said were taken on a certain 

 day in July, and were 'Kukhainen.' They were undoubted wax wing, 

 but are very badly blown by her, as they were just hatching. At mid- 

 summer Sardio Michel brought in a small batch of ' Sidensvans,' with 

 the birds (four in number) to each nest. So now I have a series, 

 though but a very short one, of this vara avis in terris — this forerunner 

 of famine, and of infinite value when one thinks of the uncertainty of 

 getting it again." 



In all, Mr. Wolley obtained twenty-nine eggs of the waxwing in 

 1856. Later on in the autumn an intelligent Lapp informed him that 

 he remembered having seen a bird some twenty years before, and once 

 or twice since had seen or heard another, but that was perhaps ten 

 years previously. On the other hand, in 1856, he had seen them 

 some half-dozen times, and found a nest, from which, however, the 

 young ones flew. This nest he subsequently brought very carefully, 

 with the branch on which it was built, to Mr. Wolley, by whom it was 

 sent the following year, by the hands of Dr. Edwin Nylander, to the 

 museum of the University of Helsingfors. The Lapp added that in 

 the spring he had observed of the birds that " they flew up in the air, 

 and came and sat in the same spot whence they had flown — he 

 thought in play ; but perhaps they were catching insects," as 

 Mr. Wolley himself suggested. 



In 1857 it seems that the waxwing was still more rarely distributed 

 in Lapland than it had been the preceding year. Mr. Wolley was of 

 course exceedingly desirous of taking a nest with his own hands, and 



