370 ANATID^E. 



not from Stavanger northward, and on the Dofre Fiell 

 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 pre- 

 dilection 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 18*37, the 

 Golden Eye did not altogether migrate ; the streams at 

 Trolhattan, under the falls, and at various rapids and 

 open parts of the rivers, the Golden Eyes 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, arid 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 

 employ him, took a great interest in natural history and 



