SMEW. 501 



to dissipate the obscurity which enveloped the breeding- 

 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 UiigUo, concerning which I was for a long 

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

 of trees, or in tijllas, 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 Ujllas, 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 borrowed 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-onager (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 



