The point of this note is to make an observation concerning the variety M(E) parametrizing line subbundles of maximal degree in a generic stable vector bundle E over an algebraic curve C. M(E) is smooth and projective and its dimension is known in terms of the rank and degree of E and the genus of C (see Section 1). Our observation (Theorem 3·1) is that it has exactly the Chern numbers of an étale cover of the symmetric product SδC where δ = dim M(E).

This suggests looking for a natural map M(E) → SδC; however, it is not clear what such a map should be. Indeed, we exhibit an example in which M(E) is connected and deforms non-trivially with E, while there are only finitely many isomorphism classes of étale cover of the symmetric product. This shows that for a general deformation in the family M(E) cannot be such a cover (see Section 4).

One may conjecture that M(E) is always connected. This would follow from ampleness of a certain Picard-type bundle on the Jacobian and there seems to be some evidence for expecting this, though we do not pursue this question here.

Note that by forgetting the inclusion of a maximal line subbundle in E we get a natural map from M(E) to the Jacobian whose image W(E) is analogous to the classical (Brill–Noether) varieties of special line bundles. (In this sense M(E) is precisely a generalization of the symmetric products of C.) In Section 2 we give some results on W(E) which generalise standard Brill–Noether properties. These are due largely to Laumon, to whom the author is grateful for the reference [9].