594 ATHYIA FULIGULA. 
AATHYIA FULIGULA (Linneus). 
TUFTED DUCK. 
(Mr. Wolley unfortunately never found time to carry out the intention (ex- 
pressed toward the close of that letter to Mr. Hewitson of 2 March, 1855, from 
which I have quoted so largely) of writing any general notes on the breeding- 
habits of this species,' a fact the more to be regretted since it was one in which he 
took peculiar interest, for he believed for a long while that he was the first 
naturalist to discover them. Herein, as he afterwards learned, he was mistaken, 
for Herr C. Ulr. Ekstrém and Herr Wilhelm von Wright had in 1832 forestalled 
everyone in describing the nest and eggs, the former announcing (Tidskrift for 
Jigare och Naturforskare, i. p. 251) that the bird bred in the lakes of Lapland 
and saying what its eggs were like, and the latter (tom. cit. pp. 287, 289) more 
precisely indicating localities where the nest had been found, as at Pite&, and near 
Karesuando, where he himself had taken one with eight eggs, in that year. Before 
1842 Mr. Dann had told Mr. Yarrell (Brit. Birds, ed. 1, iii. p. 252) of its breeding 
in Lulei Lappmark. J. F. Naumann, too (Naturgesch. Vogel Deutschlands, xii. 
p. 82), had in 1844 described his having found two nests with eggs on a lake in 
Mecklenburg in June 1888, and according to Dr. Baldamus (Naumannia, 18651, 
Heft 2, p. 101) the Baron von Maltzan had seen three nests 12 July, 1844, on the 
Kracower Lake in the same duchy, two of which contained nine eggs each. But 
it is almost certain that no ornithologist in Britain possessed eggs laid by a perfectly 
free Tufted Duck until those taken by Mr. Wolley in 1858 arrived in England, for 
there can be no doubt that the egg obtained in Holland by Mr. Hoy and by him 
sent to Mr. Hewitson, who figured it in 1838 (Brit. Ool. pl. cli. fig. 8, and also in 
his Second Edition, pl. cii. fig. 3), was wrongly attributed to this species, as the 
latter subsequently concluded (ed. 3, p. 450). That the species had bred occasion- 
ally in a wild state in England there was reason to believe, but no one in this 
country, so far as is known to me, then had eggs of it except from birds kept more 
or less in captivity ; though in June of the following year, 1854, a nest was found 
at Osberton in Nottinghamshire (Zool. p. 4440), one egg from which was given by 
Mr. Francis Foljambe to his uncle, Sir William Milner, as the latter informed me 
15 November, 1854. | 
§ 5745. Zen—Muonioniska, 26 June, 1853. “Bird shot. 
JW” 
These I took out of a nest near Muonioniska on the Finnish side 
[of the river]. A boy, Moses Daniel, brought word that he had 
found a nest of Sortti [Tufted Duck], for which I had made enquiries, 
1 [Among Mr. Welley’s papers is the beginning of what he intended to write on 
the subject ; but as it gives no more ornithological information than will be found 
under two of the following entries (§§ 5745 and 5748), it seems needless to 
reproduce it here.—Ep. | 
