366 ANATID^E. 



qum Duck, is another of the winter visitors to our coast, 

 but is still more rare than the Long-tailed Duck last 

 described. The Harlequin Duck was first noticed as a 

 British Duck in the Ornithological Dictionary of Colonel 

 Montagu, published in 1802. His descriptions were taken 

 from a pair of birds that had been killed in Scotland, and 

 sent by Lord Seaforth to Mr. James Sowerby, who pub- 

 lished coloured figures of them in 1806, in his British 

 Miscellany, tab. 6, page 11. Mr. Sowerby afterwards 

 received a young female of the same species from Mr. 

 Simmons, who shot it on one of the Orkneys. It is, how- 

 ever, a very rare bird here, and but few occurrences are 

 recorded. Dr. Edward Moore has noticed one that was 

 obtained in Devonshire, in the winter of 1830. Some 

 years since I bought two in the London market during 

 the same winter ; both of them were young females. Mr. 

 Paget has recorded one that was obtained at Yarmouth ; 

 and the gamekeeper of Sir Philip Egerton shot one, a 

 female, in Cheshire, in December, 1840, during a frost. 



Two examples of this rare Duck were obtained at 

 Torquay in the winter of 1846, and I saw a young bird 

 that had been killed in Banffshire in the autumn of 

 1851. 



It has been taken on the coast of France, according to 

 M. Vieillot, and occasionally in Germany. M. Nilsson 

 says it visits Sweden ; it is said to be found in Russia, 

 and from Lake Baikal to Kamschatka. 



The Harlequin Duck breeds in Iceland ; and the egg 

 figured in Mr. Hewitson's work was brought from that 

 island by G. C. Atkinson, Esq., of Newcastle, " who found 

 a nest containing seven or eight eggs, deposited in a bed 

 of the bird's down, upon the grass, bordering the margin 

 of a shallow lake." The egg is of a pale buff colour, 

 tinged with green, and measuring two inches one-eighth 



