404 
ANATIDyE. 
from eggs previously supposed to be genuine, and looked 
like what I had been accustomed to consider long-tailed 
duck’s. * * * This single egg from Iceland I accordingly 
valued very highly, and I looked upon it in tlie meantime 
as a veritable Pintail’s, though this discovery of Mr. Mil¬ 
ner’s, like all others founded upon single nests, perhaps 
still wanted confirmation. 
“In common with some other ornithologists I had 
long been almost in a state of desperation about several 
of the ducks,—about most of those, in fact, which do not 
occasionally, afc least, breed in Great Britain. It was 
these almost hopeless ducks which determined me more 
than anything else to take a journey to the far north ; and 
for many reasons—amongst which, not the least, was the 
experience of Mr. Dann, as recorded in the pages of 
Yarrell—the fenny regions beyond the Gulf of Bothnia 
seemed the most promising. One morning, the 7th of 
June, 1853, I was some hundred English miles up the 
river which forms the boundary between the King of 
Sweden and the Czar. Stopping at a house by the water¬ 
side, I could get nothing to eat but a few eggs, amongst 
which were nine of some kind of duck. Having no 
means of identifying them, I dropped them into the kettle 
without the least remorse. They were amongst the first 
eggs I had seen during my journey; and as the ground 
was only lately freed from snow, I had no suspicion that 
so early in the season they would be sat upon; but to 
the great disgust of a hungry man, on hacking off the 
top of one of them, I nearly decapitated a perfectly- 
formed duckling. However, I was not too much dispirited 
to make an examination of it, and from the form of the 
beak, feet, and tail, I soon came to the conclusion that it 
was a Pintail, whilst the appearance of the eggs was 
exactly that of the one I have spoken of brought from 
