WATER FOWL OF INDIA AND ASIA. 107 
edgings to every feather, though still quite distinguish- 
able. | 
The bill is dark bluish-grey, the eyes brown, and the 
feet blue-grey or olive; but in the female I got in 
Calcutta, the beak was olive at the root, spotted with 
black, and black at the tip, as well as having the feet 
olive-yellow with grey webs. But this was an excep- 
tional specimen, as she had the plumage of the male in 
undress, although, on dissection, the eggs in her ovary 
were plainly perceptible. 
The male is about sixteen inches long, with a wing 
about eight, bill about one-and-three-quarters, and 
shank about one-and-a-half. The female is little smaller. 
This very beautiful Teal properly belongs to Eastern 
Siberia, China, and Japan, breeding in the north of this 
area ; occasionally, however, it straggles to the westward 
even asfaras Europe. In India it is excessively rare, 
only about four instances of its occurrence having been 
recorded till the cold weather of 1898-99, when I got 
the above-mentioned female in the Calcutta bazaar, and 
Mr. M. Mackenzie of Rajaputtee, Chuprah, a male in 
the Sarun District, both of which were reported in The 
Asian ; on 16th December 1808, Mr. E. L. Barton, of 
Bombay, shot a male about twenty miles from Ahmeda- 
bad in Guzerat ; and since then the Indian Museum has 
received the head ofa male, shot at Jaipur, on April 6th, 
1899, by Mr. C. Barker. Another was shot in the 
district of Dibrugarh by Colonel Row. 
The Calcutta female, the only one of that sex hitherto 
recorded from India, was in my time exhibited in the 
Bird Gallery of the Indian Museum along with the first 
recorded Indian specimen, a full-plumaged male obtain- 
ed, also in the Calcutta bazaar, by Blythin 1844, and 
then, alas! in very poor condition. This1s therefore a bird 
to be looked out for, as no doubt there are and have been 
more about ; though it must be noticed that the last few 
years have been unusually remarkable for an invasion of 
