384 BIRDS OF NORFOLK. [APPENDIX A.] 



appearance of standing so high on the legs as in the 

 example now recorded. 



I submitted the parasites before mentioned to Dr. 

 E. Piaget, who was kind enough to inform me that they 

 were a new species, for which he proposed the name of 

 Nirmus assimilis. 



SOMATERIA SPECTABILIS (Linn^us.) 



KING-DUCK. 



In a foot-note at p. 192 of the present volume, I 

 gave my reason for omitting this species from the " Birds 

 of Norfolk," a step which I had already taken with Mr. 

 Stevenson's full concurrence in 1879, in the second 

 edition of Lubbock's " Fauna of Norfolk." Mr. Julian 

 G. Tuck favoured me in the autumn of 1888 with some 

 interesting notes on the birds observed by him at Hun- 

 stanton, and mentioned a young male " eider " seen by 

 him cased at a fish-shop in that town, as apparently 

 differing from other eiders that he had seen. As he 

 had no books of reference with him he made a mental 

 note of it as " a rather dark and small eider," and sug- 

 gested that it might possibly be an example of the 

 king-duck. I had an opportunity of examining this 

 specimen in the last week of July, 1889 — unfortunately 

 after my article on the eider had been printed off— and 

 was delighted to find it a young male Somateria spec- 

 talilis. The history of the bird is as follows : — It was 

 seen alive off Hunstanton by sexeral of the shore gun- 

 ners, in January, 1888 ; among others, by Mr, Tuck's 

 correspondent referred to in the "Zoologist," 1888, 

 p. 148, and was eventually shot about the middle of 

 that month. Mr. Osborne, fishmonger, of Hunstanton, 

 bought it, and for him it was preserved by Mr. Clark, of 

 Snettisham. The specimen did not leave Mr. Osborne's 

 possession until I bought it of him, and transferred it to 

 the Norfolk and Norwich Museum, where it now is. 

 (See also " Zoologist," 1889, pp. 383-85, and " Trans, of 

 the Norfolk and Norwich Nat. Soc," v., pp. 105-106). 



