GOLDEN EYE. 373 



parate Norway from Sweden, as well as the eastern parts. 

 It breeds in small numbers on the coast of Norway, but 

 not from Stavanger northward, and on the Dofre Field 

 Mountains. It prefers rivers to lakes, particularly the 

 neighbourhood of falls and rapids. The Laps and settlers 

 place boxes, with an entrance-hole, in the trees on the banks 

 of the rivers and lakes in which the Golden Eye lays its 

 eggs. Although the birds are always robbed of their eggs, 

 they gain nothing by experience, but seem to have such a 

 predilection for holes in trees that if such cavities are to 

 be found, artificial or natural, they always appear to 

 prefer them to any other locality. The Golden Eye seems 

 never to be driven from the north except by the waters 

 freezing up. During the long and dreadful winter of 

 1837, the Golden Eyes did not altogether migrate; in 

 the streams at Trolhattan, under the falls, and at various 

 rapids and open parts of the rivers, they were, in con- 

 siderable numbers, all the winter, in company with the 

 Goosander, while all the Ducks, Mallards, and Wigeons, 

 were starved to death and found dead upon the ice. 

 There have been speculations and opinions as to the mode 

 the Golden Eye adopts to carry its young down from the 

 holes of the trees in which they are hatched, which are 

 frequently twelve or fifteen feet from the ground, and at 

 some distance from the water. That the bird does tran- 

 sport them is beyond doubt. There is, I believe, but one 

 person who has ever actually witnessed the manner. M. 

 Nilsson was not aware of it. The Laps, whom I fre- 

 quently interrogated, were also ignorant, beyond the mere 

 fact of the bird carrying them. The clergyman, however, 

 at Quickiock, in Lulean Lapmark, near the source of that 

 chain of vast lakes whence the Lulean river flows, was 

 once a witness. Contrary to the general character of the 

 Lap clergymen in Lapland, this gentleman, with little to 



