18/3.] MR. R. SWINHOE ON A CHINESE SCAUP DUCK. 411 



nam, the skin of which is also exhibited, stuffed, in the Museum. 

 Dr. Krauss intends shortly to describe and figure the skeleton *. 



1. Sphargis coriacea, Gray, Cat. Tort. p. 71. 



A specimen of this species has this month (February 1873) been 

 taken on the coast of Yorkshire ; but I fear it has been so cut up 

 that it will not make a skeleton. 



3. On a Scaup Duck found in China. By Robert Swinhoe, 

 F.Z.S., H.B.M. Consul, Ningpo. 



[Received March 1, 1873.] 



Two brown Scaup Ducks were brought to me alive the other day 

 (21st October 1872) by a fisherman, who said he had taken them, 

 along with several others of the same kind, in his fishing-nets, out 

 of very large flocks, off the mouth -of our river. From the mottling 

 of their backs it was easy to see that they belonged to the Scaup 

 group ; but they were too small for the true Fulix marila, which I 

 had before procured at Amoy. 



I looked at Yarrell's ' British Birds,' and Baird's 'Report of Ex- 

 plorations and Survey ' &c, part 2. Birds, and made them out to 

 be the Fulix affinis (Eyton), or American Scaup. I got the fisher- 

 man to bring me the remaining birds, and picked out five more from 

 this dead lot, which gave me three adult males and one adult female. 



They all agreed in smallness of size and main characters, which 

 showed them to be of the same species. One peculiarity, however, I 

 noticed in them, which neither Yarrell nor Baird mentions ; and that 

 is " the white on the primaries of the icings." As Fulix marila and F. 

 affinis are said to have similar wings, I thought the omission of this 

 was accidental ; and I was confirmed in this view by turning to 

 M'Gillivray's ' British Birds' (vol. v. p. 118), and reading that 

 F. marila has the primaries partly greyish brown, but from the fourth 

 primary to the tenth secondary is a broad white band, including the 

 whole length of three quills except the tips ; and I concluded there- 

 fore that I had got F. affinis, and that its occurrence here showed 

 that, as in the case of (Edemia americana and Larus occidentalis, 

 American sea-birds of the Pacific side often visit Eastern Asia. But 

 a reference to Schlegel (' Museum des Pays-Bas ') upset my specula- 

 tions. Schlegel points to the less white on the primaries in F. affinis 

 as one of the chief distinctions between it and F. marila. In his 

 own words (op. cit. Anseres, p. 28), "au blanc des remiges primaires 

 n'atteignant pas le bord posterieur des secondares." Our bird, then, 

 is not the American F. affinis ; but it nevertheless must be the bird 



* The specimen at Stuttgart measures in a straight line from the end of the 

 skull to the tip of the tail 187 centims. ; the skull is 25 centims. long, and 

 21-5 centims. broad. (See Ann. & Mag. Nat. Hist. 1873, xii. p. 77.) 



M. G-ervais lias published a paper on the skeleton of a young animal of this 

 genus in the Nouv. Arch, du Museum, and has described a fossil species, Sphargis 

 pseiidostracion. (See Ann. & Mag. Nat. Hist. 1873, xi. p. 471.) 



