that one might almost catch them with a butterfly-net, as they flitted about on the edge of the little pools which are found among the sandhills, and their eggs were then so rare in British collections that, on my return, I was able to supply such ardent collectors as the late Canon Tristram of Durham, and Professor A. Newton of Cambridge. In 1914 I saw these charming little birds quite at home in the aviary of Mr. St. Quintin in Yorkshire, who had imported them from Iceland.
I was also able to prove that the geese which were supposed by Professor W. Macgillivray to be the Pink-footed or the Bean goose (which had also been reported by so good an ornithologist as Selby to breed in Sutherland) were really the Greylag goose. Another bird which had been stated by J. Macgillivray to breed, but of which I could find no reliable evidence, was the Goosander; it is now not uncommon in Inverness-shire and Ross-shire, where ii breeds in holes, but always near the rapid mountain streams which it frequents in preference to still water.
My next journey in search of birds was more important and interesting, and on that occasion I had the company of Mr. T.E. Buckley, who helped me to write the List of the Birds of Turkey, which we compiled and which was published in the Ibis for 1870.* In this paper we said very little about the country, but, though the list is now very much enlarged by later discoveries, our account of the birds was the first attempt at such a thing and contained a good many interesting notes, especially on the birds of prey, which were at that time more numerous than in any other country I have visited.
Arriving at Athens at the end of January, 1869, we found the mountains under snow, which was exceptionally heavy that winter. We engaged as dragoman a man named Alexander, who at that time had a good reputation as a travelling servant, and who enabled us to escape a very dangerous and, as they afterwards became, notorious band of robbers. We were warned by the Consul that it was unsafe to go far out of Athens without a guard, and four mounted gendarmes were provided to escort us as far as Chalcis. Our start was arranged for February 2nd, but two hours before daylight on the morning of the 1st, Alexander woke us up, saying that our day of departure was known to the brigands, who had their spies in the town, and that our best chance was to get out of the city before daylight, when the gendarmes would meet us. Everything had been got ready before, and the horses were loaded with unusual speed. When the guards turned up, we noticed that their carbines were tightly strapped to their saddles, which implied that they did not mean to use them or thought there would be no necessity for so doing.
On the next day we passed through a gorge where the brigands might easily have surprised us, and Alexander was very anxious that I should not attempt to use the new breech-loader Henry carbine which I carried, as he said that if we were caught it would only be a question of ransom. As it turned out, the brigands were a day too late, but they attacked and robbed some people who had an escort in this very place, two days later, and we reached Chalcis after a long and tiring ride through Bœotia. Here I got my first taste of the insect pests which were then, as they are now,
1 Pages 59–77, 188–201, 327–341.
