398 
III. 
[1829]* 
My dear Lubbock, 
It was with surprise, I learned from your letter, 
you had been so unwell; hut hope you have overrated the time that 
you expect to be domiciled. As you will not be able to go to 
Horsey for the fishing, at present, and you want some pike, I will 
go over next Week, and take Ilewitt with me, and I will send you 
some fish by Watts on the following Saturday. When you were 
at Yarmouth last, I recollect you asked me about the Morillon 
Duck, I now send you one, and it is by no means an uncommon 
fowl here, and is one of the few birds, which Montagu fell into 
error respecting, and perhaps from the circumstance that he never 
saw the bird. But you will say “ if it is a common fowl here 
(Yarmouth) is it not probable they would visit the Devonshire coast 
with the other ducks, when they are driven from the Norfolk coast 
by the severity of the weather. My answer is, no — because as 
Col. Hawker says the Golden-eyes, and Morillons go out to feed 
every night to sea, where they will remain tossed about in the most 
tempestuous weather; and I learn from the gunners that these 
fowl, the Morillon, which they call the Little Rattlewing, will 
remain here and at sea, when every other species of fowl is gone to 
the southward. 
Montagu seems to think that as far as he has been able to 
discover, that naturalists have considered the immatured Golden- 
eye as the Morillon, but just have the goodness to compare the 
* The date of this letter is approximately fixed by a passage in one of 
Lubbock’s MS. books, now in the possession of the Secretary of the Society 
(p. 247), as follows : — “ I, some years since, whilst staying with my friend 
Mr. Girdlestone, talked with him on this point. The following winter, 1S29, 
I received from him a letter, an abstract of which is as follows: — ‘When 
you were last in Yarmouth, we spoke upon the Morillon. I now send you 
one,’ ” &c., &c., very nearly as above. The letter here printed, bears no post- 
mark, and most likely accompanied the birds mentioned therein, while the 
other letter, from which Lubbock quotes, was probably sent by post ; but 
from the identity of various expressions in them, they evidently must have 
been written almost simultaneously. 
The subject of the whole letter, the supposed distinction of the Morillon 
and the Golden-Eye, has long since been settled in the negative. To discuss 
it here would answer no good purpose. 
