AETHYIA RUFINA. D983 
[§ 5717. One.—(Lentini, Sicily, 1854?) From Signor Luigi 
Benoit, through Mr. Robert Birkbeck, 1854. 
Marked “ Anas rufina” by Signor Benoit, from whom Mr. Birkbeck, who 
had made his acquaintance in Sicily in 1853, received it, with two others, 
late in the following summer, and gave it to me. From its small size I 
doubted its genuineness, but I find it to agree very well with others, and 
especially that to which Mr. Hudleston gave a good character (§ 5716). 
Signor Benoit, in his ‘Ornitologia Siciliana,’ published at Messina in 1840 
(pp. 203, 204), wrote that though this species was common in the island at all 
seasons, and bred in the neighbourhood of the Lake of Lentini, where the 
people assured him they had taken the eggs to put under tame Ducks, he 
himself had not then been able to examine a nest. He, however, subsequently 
procured eggs, as stated on his authority in 1873 by Prof. Doderlein (Avifauna 
del Modenese e della Sicilia, p. 268), and this is doubtless one of them. | 
[§ 5718. One‘ Sarepta,” Volga. From Herr Méschiler, 
1862.] 
[§ 5719. One.—South Russia. From Herr A. Heinke, of 
Kamuschin, through Dr. Giinther, 1863. ] 
[§ 5720. Hight—Salzee, Saxony, 1 July, 1868. “ Blds.” 
From Dr. Baldamus. 
Most kindly sent to me by Dr. Baldamus, who wrote to me from Halle in 
Saxony, 15 August, 1868 :—“Herewith you have an authentic laying of 
Branta rufina, taken by myself”; and offered to put together some notes from 
his own observation on the breeding of the species for publication in ‘The 
This,’ of which I was then editor. What prevented him from carrying out 
his proposal I do not remember ; but two years later he furnished them to 
the ‘Journal fiir Ornithologie’ (1870, pp. 278-281), and therein stated that 
he had discovered that it bred yearly on a pool, cvergrown with sedge, reeds, 
and other water-plants, close to the Mansfeld or Eisleben Salt-lake, and had 
visited the place for fuur years in succession to observe the birds’ breeding- 
habits. In the list he there gave of ten nests known to him he includes one 
on the Ist of July, 1868, with six eggs (stark bebrutet), which he especially 
mentions—accounting for the small number by the supposition of the first 
laying having been destroyed by Moor-Buzzards. But there is no notice of 
this nest of eight eggs taken by himself on that very day. I imagine therefore 
that there must be some slight mistake about the nest with six eggs, but 
I think there can be none about this one with eight—all carefully inscribed 
by him and sent to me scarcely more than six weeks from the time of their 
being taken. In his printed paper he says that in 1866 he counted twelve, in 
1868 sixteen, and in 1869 fourteen Drakes of this species on the pool, where 
also Shovelers, Puchards, and White-eyed Ducks bred. | 
