Birds. 1779 



found upon comparison that the two examples agreed both in anatomy 

 and external colour and dimensions. 



A third example, obtained some years ago in the London market by 

 Mr. Henry Doubleday (who has also been good enough to allow 

 me the use of it), and which had previously been supposed to be a 

 specimen of the bird known as the American scaup* — although from 

 being an older, and probably an adult bird, it somewhat differs in 

 plumage, — is evidently identical with the others. 



The three birds which I have mentioned were exhibited by Mr. 

 Bartlett on the 13th inst. at the evening meeting of the Zoological So- 

 ciety, and were satisfactorily shown, by comparison with a long series 

 of examples selected from this group of ducks, to belong to a new, and 

 hitherto, undescribed species. 



In order to mark the affinity of this bird to our common pochard 

 (Fuligula ferina) , the scientific name ferinoides has been adopted for 

 it by Mr. Bartlett ; and the name of ' Paget's pochard ' has been also 

 given it, after my late friend C. J. Paget, Esq., of Great Yarmouth 

 (near which place the first authenticated British specimen was ob- 

 tained), a zealous and accomplished naturalist, and one of the authors 

 of a useful work on the Natural History of Great Yarmouth and its 

 neighbourhood. 



The specimen of this bird which I have mentioned to be in the 

 possession of Mr. H. Doubleday, and which is represented in the 

 foreground of the cut at the head of this paper, is supposed tobe in the 

 adult dress, and has the bill black at the point and at the base, the re- 

 maining portion being pale blue ; the irides yellowish-white ; the head 

 and upper part of the neck of a rich and very deep chestnut, finely 

 glossed with purple ; the lower part of the neck and breast black ; in 

 the younger birds the neck almost wants the purple gloss, and is of a 

 lighter colour, the breast being also at first not much darker than the 

 neck ; the back and wing-coverts are minutely freckled with grayish- 

 white on a black ground ; the sides and flanks, both under and below 

 the wing, are in the immature bird like the back, but in the adult are 

 lighter, the freckling being produced, as in the back of the common 

 pochard, by lines of black on a white ground ; the back and wing- 

 coverts are also darker in the immature than in the adult bird, and are 

 tinged with yellowish-brown ; wing-coverts very dark -brown, slightly 



* It is described and figured in Yarrell's ' British Birds,' under the name of 

 American scaup (Fuligula mariloides, Vigors). Vol. iii. p. 247 of the first edition. — 



E.N. 



