366 BIRD-LIFE OF THE BORDERS 



rather more horizontally, while the wig-eon is actually 

 horizontal. Guillemots and grebes, whose legs are 

 practically terminal members, sit bolt upright, while, 

 so far as I have been able to see, the Colymbi are unable 

 to stand at all. 



To return to my six mergansers : they were evidently 

 mated, for after landing they separated into three pairs 

 of fiances, one of which I shot, thereby, perhaps, saving 

 them from future remorse and recrimination! These 

 birds roost on the sea, and are exclusively marine 

 in their haunts ; I have never, in winter, seen them 

 away from the salt water, whereas their congener, the 

 goosander, though not uncommon inland, rarely visits 

 the tidal waters, their haunts being freshwater streams 

 and large rivers, where they feed on trout. 



There remain two other members of the mergus 

 tribe, which are invariably mentioned by writers on 

 wildfowl ; but neither of which I have ever seen alive 

 ■ — namely, the smew and the hooded merganser. The 

 former can only be regarded as an extremely rare winter 

 visitant, which has, perhaps, never occurred on the coast ; 

 and as regards the hooded merganser, the circumstantial 

 descriptions given by certain writers notwithstanding, I 

 cannot regard the evidence as sufficiently conclusive to 

 establish a scientific fact. Once an American or other 

 exotic species has been admitted into the "British List" 

 — even though by mistake in the first instance, or on 

 inadequate knowledge — there always arises around it a 

 nebulous superstratum of surmise, figment, and dubious 

 identification, tending to obscure rather than elucidate 

 its true status. There are not a dozen men in this 

 country capable of identifying, in all their varying stages 

 of plumage, such species as the hooded merganser, buffel- 



