in the Dobrudscha. 
363 
in the living bird than in preserved specimens. In the distance 
they looked like musquitoes over the water, the flocks probably 
extending to the farthest end of the lake, which cannot be less 
than eight or ten miles off. Here, then, it seemed was the 
home of the birds, for which the late John Wolley and myself, 
misled by a false description, had vainly sought in Oland 
during the spring of 1856. The isthmus between the lake and 
the sea, uneven with swampy hollows and dry hillocks that 
support a coarse and scanty vegetation, might surely be their 
appropriate breeding-places, where, in company with Terns, 
Pratincoles, Stilts, et hoc genus omne, they might be expected 
towards the end of May to deposit their eggs. Never was there 
a greater mistake. A few days later and the thousands have 
become hundreds, yet a few days more and these will have 
dwindled down to tens, so that, by the middle of May, it is 
possible that not a pair will remain behind. Doubtless they con¬ 
tinue their northward journey along this coast of the Black Sea; 
but it is in the marshes and lakes of Central Russia, in the great 
plains of the Volga, and possibly also in those of the Bug, the 
Dneiper, and the Don, that oologists must look for eggs of Larus 
minutus. 
In order to make the following notes more intelligible, it would 
be well to attempt a slight description of the chief features of 
the Dobrudscha,—not, indeed, with any pretensions to accuracy, 
as a fortnight's sojourn in a district so little travelled as this is 
only just sufficient to make a person wish to know more of it. 
One thing, however, is obvious enough, viz., that the country, 
instead of being a marsh, much more resembles the downs of 
the chalk formation, being in fact very dry, except in a few parts 
to be more particularly mentioned subsequently. As the fate of 
Lord Cardigan's cavalry and also of the French expeditionary 
column is well known, an impression has gone abroad that the 
Dobrudscha is marshy and malarious. The bones of the unfortu¬ 
nate soldiers composing the latter forces were but lately to be seen 
on the heights of Kustendje; but whether the men died of cholera, 
or any other disease, want of water was much more likely to have 
been a predisposing cause than the excess of it. 
The region north of Baltschik Bay, as far as the delta of the 
2 b 2 
