54.6 ANAS ACUTA. ; 
With some exceptions the best of them were those named by clergy- 
men in Iceland, some of whom would appear to be able to procure 
in their island even the rarest species of Duck. Others were sorted 
out only after their arrival in England by persons who were supposed 
to have the faculty, from long experience, of distinguishing the 
several species at a glance; while a large number were not provided 
with any written name, but were suited to the convenience of those 
amateurs who give to some of our curiosity-shops lists of their 
desiderata. It was these almost hopeless Ducks that determined me 
more than anything else to undertake a journey to the far north; 
and for many reasons, not the least was the experience of Mr. Dann 
as recorded in the pages of Yarrell, the fenny regions beyond the 
Gulf of Bothnia seemed the most promising. 
One morning, the 7th of June, 1853, I was some hundred English 
miles up the river which forms the boundary between the King of 
Sweden and the Czar, with whom our Queen was not yet at war, 
and in whose dominions I had obtained permission to travel. 
Stopping at a house by the waterside I could get nothing to eat but 
a few eggs, among which were nine of some kind of Duck. Having 
no means of identifying them I dropped them into the kettle 
without the least.remorse. They were among the first eggs I had 
seen during my journey, and as the ground was only lately freed 
from snow, I had no suspicion that so early in the season they 
would be sat upon; but, to the great disgust of a hungry man, 
on hacking off the top of one of them I nearly decapitated a 
perfectly-formed duckling! However, I was not too much dispirited 
to make an examination of it, and from the form of the beak, feet, 
and tail I soon came to the conclusion that it was a Pintail, while 
the appearance of the eggs was exactly that of the one I have already 
spoken of brought from Iceland. A short time after some similar 
eggs were said to belong toa bird called here Jouhi-suorsa in the 
Finnish language, of which word the first part means the hair of a 
[horse’s] mane or tail—a name, however, elsewhere applied to the 
Tufted Duck. I had also seen many Pintails on my way up the 
river. On the 14th of June, some hundred miles or so further 
north—in fact, within half an English mile of where I am now 
writing,—after a long and fruitless search for eggs, as my party was 
standing still holding a council of war, a Duck fluttered up a few 
yards off. There was a rush to the spot, greatly to the peril of the 
nest, sunk as it was in the moss. It was lined with down and 
