SMEW. 



IT is, so to speak, rather stretching a point, to include 

 this beautiful species among the North American 

 Water Fowl, with only an example of a female in the 

 British Museum, purchased from the Hudson Bay Com- 

 pany, to prove the propriety of such a course. But I 

 have always observed that ornithological committees are 

 most lenient when the admission of a handsome bird 

 (which under the most favorable circumstance can be 

 regarding as the merest exceptional straggler from 

 foreign lands) into their native avi-fauna is to be con- 

 sidered. I must, however, warn my American readers 

 not to go hunting after this bird, for it is more than 

 doubtful if any one of them will ever see it in the flesh 

 within the limits of North America, unless shipped there 

 from some port in the Old World. It is true that Audu- 

 bon claimed to have obtained a specimen, and this also 

 a female, on Lake Barataria in Louisiana near New 

 Orleans in 1817, but none has been observed within the 

 limits of the United States since that date so far as I am 

 aware. At all events one cannot fail to notice that, up to 

 this time, the male has rigorously and successfully 

 avoided our shores. 



The Smew is a native of northern Europe and Asia, 

 going in winter to the Mediterranean, and from Great 

 Britain on the west to Japan in the east. It is fond of 

 resorting to fresh water, and frequents rivers and lakes, 

 flies with great rapidity, and like all of its kind is a great 

 diver. It feeds on small fish, shell fish, small reptiles, 



