337 
The specimens which I beg leave first to submit to your notice 
were most kindly sent for my use by Mr. Daniel G. Elliot of New 
York, one of our Corresponding Members. They have been already 
exhibited at a former meeting (November 22, 1859), but I do not 
hesitate again to call your attention to them, because on that occa- 
sion the origin of two of them was, in my opinion, erroneously ac- 
counted for. They were then considered to have been respectively 
produced by crosses between (1) the Wild Duck (Anas boschas) and 
Pintail (Dafila acuta), (2) the Wild Duck and Muscovy Duck (Cai- 
rina moschata), and (3) the American Scaup (fuligula affnis) and 
the Canvas-back (F’. valisneria) or the American Pochard (/’. ame- 
ricana) *. Now, the first of these betrays, to my eye, no sign of 
descent from the Pintail. Indeed it differs in one respect only from 
the ordinary appearance of the common hybrid between the Wild 
Duck and the Dusky Duck (4. obscura); and in this one respect— 
the rufous colouring of the vent—it differs equally from the Pintail. 
But of this, more presently. The pedigree of the second bird I am 
disposed to think has been correctly suggested ; but it may be re- 
marked that it is not unlike that curious domesticated variety of the 
Wild Duck which is known to dealers as the “ Labrador,”’ the 
«« Buenos Ayres,” the “ Black,”’ or the “ Velvet’’ Duck. The origin 
of the third (Pl. CLXVII.) I believe to be due to a cross between 
the Collared Duck (Fuligula collaris) on one side, and on the other, 
one of the before-mentioned species, but probably the American Po- 
chard. A resemblance to the Collared Duck is observable in the 
white spot under the chin, and the grey speculum,—characters which 
are not possessed by either of the Scaup Ducks found in the New 
World. This last specimen is a particularly interesting one. It 
will no doubt be fresh in the recollection of the ornithologists whom 
I have the honour of addressing, that in April 1847, Mr. Bartlett 
exhibited, at a meeting of this Society, three ducks, which he con- 
sidered to form a new species, and accordingly described them by 
the name of Fuligula ferinoides +; one of them having been pre- 
viously, but erroneously, figured by the late Mr. Yarrell in his 
‘British Birds’ as an example of the American Scaup (Fuligula 
affinis). At the time, I believe that some doubts were expressed as 
to the validity of this species, and these doubts appear to me to be 
well-grounded. In the ‘ Naumannia’ for 1851 (pp. 12-15), Herr 
Badeker described some birds killed near Rotterdam as forming 
a new species under the name of Fuligula homeyeri, and in that 
Journal for the next year two of these examples were figured, which 
were subsequently exhibited by Mr. Gould at the meeting of this 
Society, March 28, 1854, and by him identified with Mr. Bartlett’s 
F. ferinoides f. 
In the ‘ Revue et Magazin de Zoologie’ for March 1853 (p. 117), 
M. Jaubert, under the name of Anas intermedia, gave an account 
and description of four male hybrids, as he considered them, between 
Fuligula ferina and F. nyroca. 
* Proc. Zool. Soc. 1859, p. 437. + Ibid. 1847, p. 48. 
t Ibid. 1854, p. 95. * 
No. 438.—ProceEpDinGs oF THE ZooLoGicaL Society, 
