if, THE SNOW-WREATH OR SIBERIAN CRANE.
the tiny feathers falling off, and leaving only the naked hairlike
shafts. Even when they leave us, however, there is still
a good deal of buff about the head, upper back, lesser and
median wing-coverts, longer scapulars, and tertials of the
young, while the dingy patch along the front of the tarsus is
still well marked.
Each year several small parties of birds are noticeable, unaccompanied
by any young ones, and never separating into
pairs. These, when they first come, still show a few buff
feathers, and have a dingy patch on the tarsus ; and, though
before they leave us, they become almost as purely white, and
have almost as well-coloured faces and legs as the old ones that
are in pairs, they never seem to attain to the full weight of these
latter. From these facts I am disposed to infer that these
parties, which include individuals of both sexes, consist of
birds of the second year ; that our birds do not cither breed or
assume their perfect plumage till just at the close of their
second year ; and that, like Pigeons and many others, they do
not attain their full weight until they have bred once at
least.
Unlike the four other species of Crane with which I am
acquainted, the Snow-Wreath never seems to resort during any
part of the day or night to dry plains or fields in which to feed,
and unlike them, too, as far as my experience goes, it is exclusively
a vegetable eater. I have never found the slightest traces
of insects or reptiles (so common in those of the other species)
in any of the twenty odd stomachs of these White Cranes that
I have myself examined.
Day and night they are to be seen, if undisturbed, standing
in the shallow water. Asleep, they rest on one leg, with the
head and neck somehow nestled into the back, or they will
stand like marble statues, contemplating the water with curved
necks, not a little resembling some white Egret on a
gigantic scale; or, again, we see them marching to and fro,
slowly and gracefully feeding amongst the low rushes.
Other Cranes, and notably the common one and the Demoiselle,
daily pay visits in large numbers to our fields, where they
commit great havoc, devouring grain of all descriptions, flower,
shoots, and even some kinds of vegetables. The White Crane,
however, seeks no such dainties, but finds its frugal food, rushseeds,
bulbs, corms, and even leaves of various aquatic plants,
in the cool waters where it spends its whole time.
Without preparations by me for comparison I hardly like to
be too positive on this score ; but I am impressed with the idea
that the stomach in this species is much less muscular than in
any of the others with which I am acquainted. The enormous
number of small pebbles that their stomachs contain is remarkable.
Out of an old male I took very nearly sufficient to fill an
ordinary-sized wine-glass, and that, too, after they had been
THE SNOW-WREATH OR SIBERIAN CRANE. ' 7
thoroughly cleansed and freed from the macerated vegetable
matter which clung to them. These pebbles were mostly quartz,
(amorphous and crystalline,) greenstone, and some kind of
porphyretic rock; the largest scarcely exceeding in size an
ordinary pea, while the majority were not bigger than large pins'
heads.
I have found similar pebbles in the stomachs of the Common
and Demoiselle Cranes, but never in anything like such numbers
as in those of the present species.
When not alarmed, the White Cranes' note is what, for so
large a bird, may be called a mere chirrup ; and even when
most alarmed, and circling and soaring wildly round and round,
looking down upon the capture of wounded offspring or partner,
their cry (a mere repetition of the syllables karekhur) is very
feeble as compared with that of any other of the Cranes (including
even Baleárica pavonina) whose notes I have myself
never heard.
An examination of the trachea of a fine male that I dissected
on the 22nd of February 1867, at once explained this feebleness.
Instead of a convolution entering and running far
back into the sternum, there is merely a somewhat dilated bend
just where the windpipe enters the cavity of the body ; and it
is only after the pipe has divided, which it does symmetrically
into two very nearly equal tubes, about three inches before entering
the lungs, that the rings are at all strongly marked, or that
the tube impresses one as at all powerful.
I have already noticed that it is not easy to get at these birds
(possibly due in part to a keen sense of hearing, accompanying
their large ear-orifices) ; and, as far as my experience goes,
there is only one way of shooting them with a shot gun. With
a rifle it is not difficult to get within two-hundred and fifty to
three-hundred yards of them, at which distance, with a heavy
•442 match rifle, one ought to knock them over every time.
The melancholy fact, however, is, that habitually one only succeeds
in missing them, and thoroughly scaring them with a
rifle ; so nothing remains but to have recourse to a long single
eight-bore with B. B. wire cartridge. This will easily knock
them down up to seventy, or, if a shot tells well in the neck,
up to eighty yards ; but getting within eighty or even a hundred
yards of them can only be managed, as a general rule, in one
way. You obtain from one of the native fowlers the loan of a
trained buffalo, and enter the water a good quarter of a mile,
away from the birds, under cover of the quadruped. It has, as
usual, a string run through the nostrils, and tied tightly together
behind the horns. You hold this string where it lies across the
cheek with the left hand ; your extended left arm is hidden
behind the neck ; your whole body is bent, so that your head
and neck are covered by the buffalo's shoulders, your body and
the greater part of your legs, by its body. Only your legs to a