SMEW. 505 



four Uinild's eggs, which had been brought to him. He 

 added, in answer to a question of mine, ' I think that the 

 men who came with them, if not exactly of the best behaved 

 sort, are at least so far to be trusted that they brought the 

 true ones. Kalle went at once to Made-koski.' KalleV 

 letter said in Finnish, ' I have been to Made-koski for the 

 Uinilo's down ; but there was not much of it there. The 

 birch-stump was open at the top ; and who knows but the 

 wind may have carried some of the down away ? Matthias 

 Lasko took away a little from what I have sent, to see if he 

 could make out himself that it was Uinilo's. That Uinilo 

 was caught actually from the top of those eggs ; indeed it is 



true I saw that in that birch-stump there had at 



some other time been eggs ; for there were old pieces of egg- 

 shell. Written 29th of Harvest-month (August) 1857. — 

 Karl Leppajervi.' 



" I was told by my man in Lapland that these four eggs 

 had been blown with only one hole, sufficiently well made, 

 but that a great part of the yolk had been left inside. They 

 were also stained outside ; but he had cleaned them out, 

 rounded the holes with a drill, and made a good job of them. 

 The down sent to me I found to agree generally with that on 

 the body of the female Smew ; but I did not make a careful 

 examination, and I have not yet made it. 



" At the end of October 1858 I received these other four 

 eggs. I found that the character which I had pre\dously 

 observed, but which I had originally seen on only one of the 

 first three, was common to all the other four, namely, that 

 shown by the presence of a thin calcareous covering outside 

 the egg-shell proper, apparently of the same nature as that 

 which is so conspicuous in the egg of the common tame 

 Swan. Some attempts had been made in Sodankyla, as my 

 man told me, to scrape this oflF. 



"It is worthy of note, that the very pale colour of the 

 down of the Smew seems to be connected with its choosing 

 holes for breeding. No bird of the duck kind that has 

 white down, as far as I know, places its eggs in an exposed 

 situation. The Goosander, Golden -eye. Sheldrake, birds 



VOL. IV. 3 T 



