184 
Letters , Extracts, and Notes. 
Anyhow this skin adds a new and interesting species to the 
Palaearctic Fauna, and it is, so far as T know, the first summer 
specimen of Mergus squamatus on record. I will do my best 
to obtain fuller information about this little-known bird next 
season. 
I am, Sirs, 
Yours &c., 
Wesenberg, Esthonia, S. A. Buturlin. 
Russia. 
[This is a rare bird of great interest, first discovered by 
Gould in 1861. In the collection made by Capt. Wingate 
in South China in 1898 (which was described by Mr. Ogilvie- 
Grant in this Journal for 1900) there was a fine pair of 
this Merganser (see 4 Ibis/ 1900, p. 602, pi. xii.). These 
specimens are now in the British Museum, as is also Gould’s 
original type.— Edd.] 
Sirs, —I see that on page 730 of vol. iv. 9th series, 1910, 
of ‘ The Ibis/ in a notice of the f Annals of Scottish Natural 
History/ you refer to a paper by me in the latter. 
I wish to point out to you that Loch Martnaham is in 
Ayrshire, not Dumfriesshire, and that the American Bittern 
is alleged to have been shot there in 184 . 8 , not 1898. 
I am, Sirs, 
Yours &c., 
Capenocb, Thornhill, Hugh S. Gladstone. 
Dumfriesshire. 
Nov. 5th, 1910. 
Sirs, —About twenty years ago, the late Mr. Howard 
Saunders told me that he had found an unrecorded egg of 
the Great Auk {Alca impennis ) in a small museum in France. 
When, in 1894, the Earl of Gainsborough was residing at 
Dinard, Mr. Saunders informed him of this egg being at 
Dinan and at the same time gave me the information as to 
its locality. Lord Gainsborough tells me that when he saw 
