158 ANNALS OF SCOTTISH NATURAL HISTORY 



researches. A great deal of good can be done by enlisting 

 the friendly offices of local gunners, and teaching them how 

 to discriminate between allied species. But it does seem to 

 be tolerably certain that Harelda glarialis visits the Solway 

 Firth more often than was the case in bygone days. The facts 

 seem to prove this substantially. Some few of the specimens 

 of this Sea-duck which have fallen into the writer's hands, 

 have been given away to friends. But the bulk of them are 

 preserved in the Carlisle Museum. Some are mounted and 

 others are in skin. The most interesting are perhaps the 

 adult male in change, retaining the long rectrices, shot in 

 November 1892, and the extremely juvenile male shot on 

 the 29th of October. The latter is the only immature male 

 that has been killed, to the writer's knowledge, on the Solway, 

 which shows no vestige of white in the scapulars. Indeed, 

 he was morally certain that it must be a female, until he 

 dissected it. It should be noticed that no specimen of 

 Harelda glacialis has, as yet, been shot, to the writer's know- 

 ledge, on the Solway, in perfect nuptial dress ; though such 

 a bird was shot in Morecambe Bay in February in 1884. 

 A very interesting bird is the drake in breeding dress, with 

 reddish scapulars, caught near Ren wick in April 1889. The 

 weights of the Long-tailed Ducks scaled by the writer vary 

 from i Ib. i oz. to I Ib. 10 oz., the latter being the weight 

 of two different drakes ; but some old birds may possibly 

 run up to a couple of pounds. The food of this bird consists 

 of shell-fish and Crustacea, at least when shot on the estuary. 

 The birds shot on the Solway in 1887 were generally found 

 to have been feeding on shrimps. 



NOTES ON THE OCCURRENCE OF SOME RARE 

 FISHES IN SCOTTISH WATERS. 



I. THE PELAMID (PELAMYS SARDA, BLOCH) ON THE 

 EAST AND WEST COASTS. 



By R. H. TRAQUAIR, M.D., LL.D., F.R.S., etc. 



ON the 2Oth June Mr. Robert Service presented to the 

 Museum of Science and Art a specimen of the Pelamid or 



