NOTES AND QUERIES. 157 
The Little Auk in Essex.— On Feb. 8th I saw a Little Auk, 
apparently asleep, floating with the tide in one of the channels near 
Foulness Island, on the Essex coast. On approaching me it turned 
and swam towards the further bank, and I watched it picking some- 
thing from the edge of the mud. It did not dive, but once it stood 
up in the water, and allowed me to notice that the collar on the 
lower neck was tolerably distinct. In the dead birds that I have 
examined this feature is variable, but in the whitest young bird 
(recognized by its small bill and dull black upper parts) I found that 
the feathers of the lower neck had grey bases, although these were 
not showing through. A party of Dunlins were feeding on the mud, 
and as the Auk swam near them they ran away from it in apparent 
fear, and kept a yard or so away. It is to be hoped that sufficient 
data are forthcoming to allow us to know the exact cause of these 
remarkable invasions.—FREDK. J. STUBBS. 
A Correction.—I desire as shortly as possible to refer to Mr. 
Warren’s quotations (ante, p. 109) from our ‘ Faunal Series.’ He 
singles out the Orkney volume to refer to. Our remarks in that 
volume (1891) relate almost entirely to the Hrne (Sea-Hagle, or 
White-tailed Eagle), and not to, as is misleadingly stated, ‘‘Hagles” 
generally! That statement is extremely misleading to all readers 
who do not possess our complete series; quoted as a general state- 
ment what almost entirely refers to the rarer of our British Eagles. 
All our notes which do refer to Golden Eagles in it treat of at most 
two pairs of nesting birds of this species, and these confined to Hoy, 
if, indeed, the whole evidence can be accepted to account for more 
than one pair at any tueme! But if the other volumes be consulted 
and compared a different aspect will be found exhibited, where 
Golden Eagles have always been—and still are (of course)—far more 
abundant than Sea-Hagles. To quote from one insular volume with- 
out comparing with ten others, I repeat, is utterly misleading, and 
doubly so even where the previous writer’s “compression of facts into 
two pages of text”’ cannot always be accepted as minutely correct. We 
cast no reflection here, however, except to say that the nesting eyries 
of the Golden Hagle are not, as is quoted (ante, p. 110), ‘confined to 
the highlands and islands of the western coast,” and I do not think 
that they have ever been so, within my recollection !—J. A. Harviz- 
Brown. 
INSECTA. 
Cocoons of Gyrinus. —In Mr. Gordon Dalgliesh’s interesting 
notes on the Whirligig Beetle he says (ante, p. 71) that the pupa of 
