611 



British Birds;' and, according to Mr. J. H. Gurney, jun. (Rambl. Nat. pp. 263-269), there have 

 been altogether twenty-two recorded occurrences of the Harlequin in Great Britain ; but after a 

 careful investigation into all the data he could obtain respecting these several occurrences, he 

 sums up by stating that " eight are clearly mistakes, and the rest are all doubtful except two, 

 those being the original Lewes specimen and the recent Aberdeen one." I need not here 

 recapitulate Mr. Gurney 's reasons for doubting the authenticity of the various records of the 

 occurrence of this species ; but I may add that I fully agree with him that there are only two 

 undoubted instances of specimens having been obtained in Great Britain. Mr. Robert Gray 

 (B. of W. of Scotl. p. 394) states that he wrote to Major W. Ross-King respecting a specimen 

 which he stated had been obtained in Aberdeenshire, and was informed that the bird was a 

 male Harlequin, in very fine plumage, and was shot in 1858, and was apparently a solitary 

 specimen. 



It is tolerably common in Greenland, and has been observed on the east coast ; Professor 

 Newton says that it is most common between lat. 62° and 65° N., becoming rarer to the north- 

 ward. In Iceland it is, according to Faber, a common resident, changing its quarters from north 

 to south in winter, and frequenting the most rapid rivers, on the margins of which it generally 

 breeds. There does not appear to be any undoubted instance of its occurrence in Norway ; and 

 Mr. Collett does not include it in his list of birds found in that country, but in a footnote he 

 says that a couple are said to have been observed by Boie in the Trondhjemsfiord, in the spring 

 of 1817 ; and Sommerfelt states that one is supposed to have been shot at Etne, in Hardanger, 

 in the winter of 1838. Nilsson says that there is one in the old collection at Upsala, which was 

 probably obtained on the Swedish coast ; but he gives no other instance of its occurrence there. 

 Dr. Palmen states that one was obtained in Western Sodermanland in the spring of 1862 ; but 

 there is no instance of its occurrence on the Baltic shores of Finland ; and Borggreve expresses 

 doubt as to whether it has ever been obtained on the coast of Germany. It is included by 

 Kjaerbolling in his work on the birds of Denmark ; but no instance of its occurrence there is 

 cited. Nor is there, so far as I can ascertain, any authentic instance of one having been obtained 

 in France, though Messrs. Degland and Gerbe state that it has occurred accidentally in " Ger- 

 many, England, and France." Elsewhere in Europe I find no record of its occurrence, except 

 that the Ritter von Tschusi-Schmidhofen informs me that there is a male bird in the Bamberg 

 Museum, which was shot in the Tyrol in 1852. I do not find it included in the list of birds 

 occurring in North Russia, though it is stated to have been met with on the Caspian and the Sea 

 of Aral. 



In Asia it is rather more frequently met with than in Europe, and is found as far south as 

 Lake Baikal. Von Middendorff states that from the 20th May it is tolerably common through- 

 out the Stanowoi Mountains, and also on the south coast of the Sea of Ochotsk. In Mantchuria 

 he shot it as late as the 27th October (O. S.). On the 23rd June he found young in down at 

 Udskoj-Ostrog. Dr. Radde says that it is not rare on the south-western shores of Lake Baikal, 

 especially between Kultuk Bay and the mouth of the Angara, and in 1857 he frequently saw it 

 on the Ingoda between the 7th and 11th May, and in the autumn of the same year he found a 

 few pairs in the Bureja Mountains. Von Schrenck states that he found it more numerous on 

 the Upper than on the Lower Amoor, especially in places where the streams were very swift. 



