BIRDS OF DUMFRIESSHIRE 
in thick cover, seldom at any great distance from fresh 
water, and contains from eight to eleven greenish-drab eggs 
At this season of the year the birds subsist chiefly on trout 
and salmon-parr. In winter they become more marine in 
their habitat. 
THE SMEW. Mergus alhellus.Uim^us. 
A rare irregular winter-visitor. 
Sir WiUiam Jardine, writing in 1843, would seem to indicate 
that he knew of at least one local specimen of the Smew • 
for he says : " In Scotland it can only stand as an occasional 
straggler ; a smgle specimen of the male has only occurred 
to ourselves recently killed, though we know of a few other 
mstances that can be depended on."* In 1864 Dr. Grierson 
exhibited "a Smew or White Nun . . . which was 
obtained in the vicinity of ThornhiU [eighteen miles from 
the sea], and which so far as known to Dr. Grierson, was 
the only one ever seen in that district.^f This specimen, 
a male m a very dilapidated condition, may stiU (1909) be 
seen m Grierson's Museum, ThornhiU. To this record of 
Dr Grierson's, Sir WiUiam Jardine adds the footnote : 
A specimen was shot on the River Annan near Dormont 
and IS now in the coUection of British birds there formed 
by the late W. T. Carruthers, Esq." % ; Dormont is about 
SIX miles from the sea. This bird, which it is believed was 
IK n ^'ii'J.^^^' ''^'^'^''^ "^""^ undated specimen 
labeUed Dumfriesshire, "passed from the Edinburgh Museum 
in 1876, and is now in the Royal Scottish Museum. Mr W 
i^agle Clarke writes me in 1908 that it is apparently a very 
ancient specimen, from sixty to seventy years old. The 
* Nat. Lib., 1843, Vol. XIV., pp. 175, 176. 
t Trans. D. and G. Nat. Hist. Soc, April 5th, 1864. 
t Loc. cit. 
