193 
Breeding of the Crane in Lapland. 
and left it far behind. Its confidence was the more remarkable, 
as, all the time we were with it, the old Cranes were flying round 
near the ground at some distance from us, their necks and feet 
fully stretched out as usual, but with a remarkable sudden cast¬ 
ing up of the wings in a direction over the back after each down¬ 
ward stroke, in place of the ordinary steady movement. At the 
same time they were making a peculiar kind of low clattering or 
somewhat gurgling noise, of which it is very difficult to give an 
intelligible description, and now and then they broke out into a 
loud trumpeting call not unlike their grand ordinary notes, 
which, audible at so great a distance, gladden the ears of the 
lover of nature. As we went away I saw one of the Cranes 
alight where we had left the young. Later in the day I had a 
longing wish to have another look at my young friends. I 
thought of the old naturalists—who would have called them 
“ peepers ” I suppose—one of whom wrote of the Crane in our 
fens, “ ejus pipiones sapissime vidi.” To see them now-a- 
days twice in a life, and that not in England, would be a con¬ 
solation. But it was not to be so; we came back to the spot 
where we had parted with them, rested for three or four hours 
round a stone that projected from the marsh, but we saw and 
heard nothing more of either old or young Cranes. In a morass 
with another name (which it took from a hill that overlooked 
it), “ Kharto uomaf but which was only separated from “ Iso 
uoma” by an interval of a mile or two of birch thicket, there were 
also Cranes, and I found their nest with the egg-shells lying in 
the water by it, and so many quill-feathers scattered about, 
that I almost feared some accident had happened to the sitting 
bird. 
The following year, 1854, on the 20th of May, I went with 
only Ludwig my servant-lad, to look for the Crane’s nest in 
“Iso uoma.” We saw no birds, and the spot where the nest 
had been the preceding year was not easy to find in so extensive 
a marsh. So we quartered our ground, working carefully up 
one strip of harder bog and down the next. After some hours 
of heavy walking I saw the eggs—joyful sight!—on an adjacent 
slip in a perfectly open place. The two eggs lay with their long 
diameters parallel to one another, and there was just room for a 
