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Show 1873.] MR. R. SWINHOE ON A CHINESE SCAUP DUCK. 411 nam, the skin of which is also exhibited, stuffed, in the Museum. Dr. Krauss intends shortly to describe and figure the skeleton *. 1. SPHARGIS CORIACEA, Gray, Cat. Tort. p. 71. A specimen of this species has this month (February 1873) been taken on the coast of Yorkshire ; but I fear it has been so cut up that it will not make a skeleton. 3. O n a Scaup Duck found in China. By R O B E R T S W I N H O E, F.Z.S., H.B.M. Consul, Ningpo. [Eeceived March 1, 1873.] Two brown Scaup Ducks were brought to me alive the other day (21st October 1872) by a fisherman, who said he had taken them, along with several others of the same kind, in his fishiiig-nets, out of very large flocks, off the mouth of our river. From the mottling of their backs it was easy to see that they belonged to the Scaup group; but they were too small for the true Fulix marila, which I had before procured at Amoy. I looked at Yarrell's ' British Birds,' and Baird's 'Report of Explorations and Survey' &c, part 2. Birds, and made them out to be the Fulix affinis (Eyton), or American Scaup. I got the fisherman to bring me the remaining birds, and picked out five more from this dead lot, which gave me three adult males and one adult female. They all agreed in smallness of size and main characters, which showed them to be of the same species. One peculiarity, however, I noticed in them, which neither Yarrell nor Baird mentions ; and that is " the white on the primaries of the wings." As Fulix marila and F. affinis are said to have similar wings, I thought the omission of this was accidental; and I was confirmed in this view by turning to M'Gillivray's ** British Birds' (vol. v. p. 118), and reading that F. marila has the primaries partly greyish brown, but from the fourth primary to the tenth secondary is a broad white band, including the whole length of three quills except the tips ; and I concluded therefore that I had got F. affinis, and that its occurrence here showed that, as in the case of QHdemia americana and Larus occidentalis, American sea-birds of the Pacific side often visit Eastern Asia. But a reference to Schlegel (' Museum des Pays-Bas ') upset my speculations. Schlegel points to the less white on the primaries in F. affinis as one of the chief distinctions between it and F. marila. In his own words (op. cit. Anseres, p. 28), "au blanc des remiges primaires n'atteignant pas le bord posterieur des secondaires." Our bird, then, is not the American F. affinis; but it nevertheless must be the bird * The specimen at Stuttgart measures in a straight line from the end of the skull to the tip of the tail 187 centims.; the skull is 25 centims. long, and 21-5 centims. broad. (See Ann. & Mag. Nat. Hist. 1873, xii. p. 77.) M. Gervais has published a paper on the skeleton of a young animal of this genus in the Nouv. Arch, du Museum, and has described a fossil species, Sphargis pseudostracion. (See Ann. & Mag. Nat. Hist. 1873, xi. p. 471.) |