Brewer on the Hocky Mountain Golden-eye. 149 
Although alpine, there is absolutely nothing to authorize us in re- 
garding this species as “ circumpolar,” or even “ arctic,” if by arctic 
it is intended to imply that it breeds chiefly within the Arctic 
Circle. It is not known to occur in any part of Asia, is unknown 
in Russia, and has never been known to breed in any part of Eu- 
rope, except Iceland, where it is resident, and restricted to a very 
small district of that island. No specimen has ever been taken in 
Great Britain, and it is unknown to the rest of Europe except as a 
very rare straggler. Four individuals are recorded as having been 
taken at different times on different parts of the coast of Norway, 
and one in Southern Spain, but these five seem to comprise all of 
its European record outside of Iceland. 
In North America its distribution appears to be not only through- 
out the northern portions of the continent from Greenland, on the 
east, to the Yukon region on the west, but it is now also known to 
breed throughout the mountain ranges as far south, at least, as 
Southern Colorado, in latitude 38° ; and although the fact has not 
been positively ascertained, there seems no good reason to doubt 
that it also breeds among the high mountain ranges that lie farther 
south, in New Mexico and Arizona. Its abundance in Colorado is 
not in harmony with its being regarded as an exclusively Northern 
species. After Richardson and Nuttall, Dr. J. G. Cooper appears 
to have been the first of our ornithologists to put upon the record 
the presence of this Duck among the western mountain ranges of 
the United States. In the “American Naturalist” (III, p. 83), in 
an article entitled “ The Fauna of Montana Territory,” Dr. Cooper 
mentions his having seen a number of dark-headed Ducks which he 
refers to this species, and no doubt correctly, although he was not 
able to procure an example. 
Reinhardt has also recorded the islandicus as a bird of Greenland, 
where, as he states, it breeds in South Greenland, and has been 
procured in the neighborhood of both Godthaab and Nenortalik. 
Holboll states that in Greenland its range is restricted to the space 
between 63° 45' and 64° 30'. North of this the natives do not 
know it at all ; so that its northern limit is two degrees south ot 
the Arctic Circle. In Maine and New Brunswick a few pairs are 
found each summer undoubtedly breeding, though no nests have 
been detected, as far south as the forty-fifth degree. Mr. George 
A. Boardman informs me that they are somewhat rare in the neigh- 
borhood of Calais, but become much more common on the St. Croix 
