416 
Mr. F. C. Selous on 
his horses. This he quickly did, and Mr. B. H- and 
myself—each of us carrying a light collecting-box slung over 
our shoulders—were soon riding behind our guide down a 
narrow open channel of w r ater leading out into the marsh. 
The depth of the water varied from two to four feet, but was 
seldom less than three; the bottom, however, was hard and 
sound, so that the horses never floundered about. Some¬ 
times the reeds were fairly thick, though nowhere on this side 
of the marsh at all dense or very high; but about a mile 
from the shore there grew an almost impenetrable reed-brake, 
with stems as thick as one's fingers, and flowering tops 
rising some ten feet above the water. As we waded slowly 
through the shorter and more open reeds, dozens of Purple 
Herons, Night-Herons, and Little Egrets rose in front of us, 
while numbers of White-winged Black Terns flew over our 
heads, but for some time not a nest of any sort could we 
discover. At last a shout from our guide announced that he 
had found something, and on our getting up to him he 
pointed proudly to a Coot's nest containing nine eggs, and 
seemed much disgusted when he learned that this was not 
what we were looking for. On being questioned by Mr. B. 
H-, who speaks Turkish and Greek fluently, our crest¬ 
fallen guide told us that it w r as eggs of this colour that 
he had taken a few days before, and that he thought they 
were laid by the different kinds of Herons that were always 
to be seen in the marsh. Blue eggs, he told us, he had never 
seen. We found that we were unable to penetrate with the 
horses into the dense cane-brake, but, hoping to discover some 
nests of the White-winged Black Terns, we spent four hours 
riding all over the more open parts of the marsh. We failed 
to discover any of the floating nests of the Terns, and I do not 
think these birds could have yet commenced to build. We 
met with great numbers of Coots’ nests, and some twenty 
nests of the Great Crested Grebe (Podicipes cristatus ), though 
we never caught sight of either a Coot or a Grebe, as the 
birds always slipped off their nests and dived or swam away 
without showing themselves, so that the Turkish shepherd 
may be excused for believing that the eggs he had taken had 
