

































216 Messrs. H. Seebohm and J. A. Harvie Brown on 
bird on the 20th May, but did not succeed in obtaining a speci- 
men until the 23rd, by which time it had become common. 
At one time we were under the impression that there must 
be two species of these birds, one of them a smaller, more 
buff-breasted, and much more silent bird; and we consequently 
brought home more than forty skins for examination. We 
are now convinced that the difference in size and habits is 
merely the difference of sex. 
On the 12th June, as we were slowly creeping down the 
great river, we stopped to cook under the lee of a steep bank 
of the Petchora, just before we entered the delta. The bank 
was wooded to the water’s edge; and Seebohm spent some 
hours exploring the dwarf forest. Willow-Wrens were com- 
mon; and his attention was arrested by one which was most 
vociferously uttering a note unlike any that he had ever heard 
from a Willow-Warbler. The note reminded him somewhat of 
the spitting of a cat, a hissing sound, which he attempted on the 
spot to expressin words. He shot the bird and tied to its leg 
a label marked Tuz-zuk Warbler, to remind him.of the note. 
The bird proved to be a female. The respective lengths of 
the wing and tail agree with female P. trochilus; but the wing- 
formula is different. Out of at least a hundred skins of P. tro- 
chilus which Seebohm has examined, he has always found the 
second primary intermediate in length between the fifth and 
sixth. In the bird in question the second primary is inter- 
mediate in length between the sixth and seventh. Whether 
this bird be a different species or not requires further inves- 
tigation. 
PHYLLOSCOPUS BOREALIS (Blasius). 
In Seebohm’s collection there are three skins of this species 
from North-east Russia. One was shot by Harvie Brown and 
Alston near Archangel ; a second was procured by Piottuch at 
Mesen; and the third was shot by Seebohm in the same locality 
as the variety of P. trochilus just mentioned, and whilst he was 
searching for a second specimen. He remarked in his diary at 
the time that the note was more rapid than that of P. trochilus, 
and more resembling that of the Whitethroat. In fact the 

