THE GOOSANDER OR MERGANSER. 303 
placed sometimes among stones, sometimes in long grass, or 
under the cover of bushes, and when the locality affords them 
in the stumps or hollows of decayed trees.” 
Acerbi, also quoted by Yarrell, says :— 
“The Mergus merganser, instead of building a small nest 
like the ducks, on the banks, or among the reeds and rushes, 
chooses to lay her eggs in the trunk of an old tree, in which 
time, or the hand of man, has made such an excavation as she 
can conveniently enter. The person that waylays the bird for 
her eggs places against a fir or pine tree, somewhere near the 
bank of the river, a decayed trunk, with a hole in its middle; 
the bird enters and lays her eggs in it; presently the peasant 
comes, and takes away the eggs, leaving, however, one or two. 
The bird returns, and, finding but a single egg, lays two or 
three more. She is again robbed as before, but a few are left 
at last for the increase of her family. As soon as the eggs are 
hatched, the mother takes the chicks gently in her bill, carries 
and lays them down at the foot of the tree, when she teaches 
them the way to the river, in which they instantly swim with 
an astonishing facility.” 
And Dresser tells us that “it breeds late in April or early 
in May, and makes its nest in the vicinity of water, either on 
the ground, or else it uses the hollow of a tree, the latter being, 
so far as I know, the usual place selected by this species for the 
purposes of nidification ; and it frequently deposits its eggs in 
the nest-boxes hung up by the peasantry in the north of Scan- 
dinavia and Russia. When at Uleaborg, however, I obtained 
eggs from nests on the ground, in a hollow scratched out and 
filled with down. When it nests inatree it frequently makes 
use of a suitable hollow at some altitude from the ground, and 
fills it with a considerable quantity of down, on which the eggs 
are deposited ; when the young are hatched they are carefully 
carried by the female bird in her bill down to the water ; and these 
young birds are able at once to swim, and even dive, with ease.” 
Dybowski, writing of this species in Southern Siberia, says :— 
“Tt nests on the ground, amongst the grass, building with dry 
grass and lining the interior thoroughly withdown. The female 
lays nine eggs and sits close. They arrive about the middle 
of April, and remain until Lake Baikal freezes towards the 
end of December.” 
In the treeless and grassless localities in which we mostly 
see them in summer, I should not be surprised if they bred like 
the Brahminy in holes in rocks, but holes near to and not very 
high above the water. 
The eggs are said to vary in number from seven to twelve 
They are broad, regular ovals, with very fine, smooth, satiny 
shells of a uniform buffy white or creamy yellow. They vary 
from 2°5 to 2.9 in length, and from 1°66 to I’9 in breadth, but 
the average of eleven is 2°7 by 1°8 nearly. 
