SMEW. 601 



to dissipate the obscurity which enveloped the breediug- 

 habits of the Smew, and a full account of his discovery was 

 published in ' The Ibis ' for 1859, pp. 69-76. As the 

 volume has long been out of print, the Editor considers it 

 desirable to quote from this interesting account at con« 

 siderable length : — 



" The first year I was in Lapland, 1853, it was important 

 for me to find out the native, that is, the Finnish, names for 

 the birds of the country. Of the Ducks generally I soon 

 learnt to understand to which species each name referred ; but 

 there was one called UngUo, concerning which I was for a long 

 time in the dark. It was described as breeding in the holes 

 of trees, or in tyllas, that is, nest-boxes. It was a smaller 

 bird than the Sotka (Golden-eye), but was able to turn that 

 bird out of its hole, if it wanted it for itself; though some 

 accounts told the reverse story. It had formerly been found 

 not unfrequently on the Muonio river, and especially on the 

 lakes through which the little Jeris-joki runs. On the 

 former river, a little above the inlet of the Palo-joki, there is 

 even an islet called after it, Ungilon-saari, on which, though 

 there are still tyllas, the bird has not been known for a good 

 many years. In the course of time I learned that the bird 

 had a beak like a Koskilo (Merganser) ; and the colours of 

 the male were described to me in a way that left no doubt it 

 was the Smew. Still it required some selection of evidence 

 to hold the opinion firmly ; for instance, a woman talking to 

 me imitated the cry of the bird, in doing which she used the 

 syllables ' u-u-ungel ' with the music of the spring call of 

 the Long-tailed Duck, and by her subsequent description 

 clearly showed that that was the bird she meant, though it 

 is usually known by quite another name, identical with, and 

 perhaps bon-owed from, the Swedish, Alle. This suggested 

 to me that the name Ungilo may have been originally applied 

 to the Long-tailed Duck, inasmuch as we find, in Strom's 

 ' Description of Sandmor,' that the Long-tailed Duck is 

 called Angle-Tnager (Hook-maker) on parts of the Norwegian 

 coast, doubtless from its cry, connected with the time of its 

 appearance, when the sea-fishing begins. Nothing is more 



