


















106 Messrs. H. Seebohm and J. A. Harvie Brown on 
any thing upon the birds of the Petchora. When we planned 
our excursion to the valley of the great river we looked upon it 
as virgin ground. In St. Petersburg we learned that Dr. 
Pelzam visited the Petchora last year to collect for the mu- 
seum at Kasan; but we were afterwards told in several towns 
and villages where we stayed, that he spent most of his time 
in dredging, and did not pay much attention to the ornitho- 
logy of the country. 
We left London on 2nd March, and arrived at Ust Zylma on 
14th April. The ground was covered with from two to three 
feet of snow; and winter, z. e. frost or snow-storm, continued 
until 7th May. Up to this date we only succeeded in iden- 
tifying seventeen species of birds. From 8th to 15th May 
we had spring; 7. e. the sun was powerful enough to thaw 
the snow during the day-time, but it generally froze again at 
night. During these eight days migratory birds began to 
arrive much more rapidly, and we succeeded in adding thirteen 
to our list. On 16th May we suddenly plunged into mid- 
summer; the snow melted lke butter upon hot toast, and 
the river began to rise rapidly. We shot new species of mi- 
gratory birds on almost every excursion we made, and by the 
20th May we increased our list of birds from thirty, at which 
it stood on the 15th, to fifty. By the 21st May the Petchora 
had risen nearly thirty feet in height ; and on that day the ice 
on the great river broke up, and marched past Ust Zylma in 
a stream a mile and a half wide, at the rate of four miles an 
hour for ten days, during which we added another score of 
birds to our list. | 
We gave the ice ten days’ start, and then followed it down 
the river, stopping frequently on the islands to collect. During 
these ten days we explored the forests in the neighbourhood 
of Ust Zylma, and made our excursion to Habariki, and 
succeeded in identifying fifteen more species of birds. 
We finally bade goodbye to Mons. Znaminski and our other 
kind friends in Ust Zylma on the 10th June. The first five- 
and-twenty miles are a tolerably straight run of broad river. 
Then come a hundred miles of broad river full of islands, a 
sort of elongated delta, which the arctic circle cuts nearly in 

