the Birds of the Lower Petchora. 107 
the centre. This is followed by a hundred miles of true delta, 
ending in a further seventy-five miles of submerged delta or 
lagoon, bounded by the range of islands called the Golievski 
banks, where the Petchora enters the Arctic ocean between 
the promontory of Russki Zavarot and the island of Varandai. 
We made Alexievka our headquarters, occupying some of the 
houses belonging to the Petchora 'Timber-trading Company. 
The voyage occupied ten days, during which we added fifteen 
more birds to our list. We remained six weeks at Alexievka, 
making numerous visits to the neighbouring islands and to 
the tundra, and extending our excursion to the mouth of the 
river, adding about another dozen fresh species to the list of 
birds. On 2nd August we sailed from Alexievka in the 
schooner ‘Triad,’ 149 tons register, chartered with larch to 
Cronstadt, and landed at Elsinore after a passage of thirty-five 
days. 
The whole of the north of Russia through which we sledged 
is one vast forest of spruce, Scotch fir, and larch, with oc- 
casionally birch and willow. Now and then we came upon 
an oasis of cultivated land surrounding a village; and occa- 
sionally we crossed a flat open plain which would doubtless 
be a swamp in summer, too wet for trees to grow upon. The 
country is gently undulating, with no hills of any magni- 
tude. The timber gradually lessened in size as we proceeded 
northward, and finally ceased altogether soon after we had 
crossed the arctic circle. We then came upon the tundra, 
a dreary flat extent of country reaching to the sea—not a 
dead flat, but a gently undulating moor, an arctic prairie, a 
Siberian tundra, with occasionally distant bluffs upon the 
horizon. The east bank of the Petchora is generally a steep 
cliff of mud, clay, gravel, sand, or turf, but never rock, 
rising sometimes sixty or seventy feet. The foot of this cliff 
is sometimes stony; and now and then we came upon a 
boulder upon the tundra, probably dropped there by some 
iceberg during the glacial period. In the bed of the Petchora, 
before the flood came, we sometimes picked up limestone and 
other fossils washed down from the interior; but the whole 
country is obviously of diluvial origin. | Occasionally the 





