374 WEB-FOOTED BIRDS. 



as the Geese. Their flight is comparatively light, swift, high and 

 whistling. They are somewhat nocturnal, feeding and travelling 

 often by night or in slender twilight. Their food is principally veg- 

 etable, plants, and seeds, to which they also add aquatic animals, and 

 sometimes soft bodied insects and mollusca. They are disposed to poly- 

 gamy : breeding in the grass often near water, and some in the hollows 

 of decayed trees. The nest is often lined with down, and the eggs are 

 numerous. On the female alone devolves the whole charge of incu- 

 bation and the rearing of the young : she covers her eggs as often 

 as she has necessity to leave them, with the down or lining of her 

 nest, and is very secret in her movements and her retreat. 



The species are numerous, and spread over the whole globe to 

 both extremities, but they are most abundant in the temperate 

 regions, and generally retire in our hemisphere far north to breed. 



Subgenus. — Spathulea, Fleming. (Spatula, Boie. 

 Rhynchaspis, Leach. Soiiaj).) 



The bill long, without a fleshy protuberance ; the upper mandible 

 semicylindric, broad and somewhat orbicular at the extremity, the 

 nail small, and much incurved : lamelliform teeth, very long and 

 slender. The head wholly feathered. — The female differing greatly 

 from the male. 



These feed chiefly on small aquatic animals, minute shell-fish and 

 insects, which they sometimes obtain by sifting the mud through 

 their long and pectinate teeth ; they also at times collect tender 

 marine and fluviatile vegetables. The bill is very sensitive, ex- 

 hibiting when dry a complicated nervous surface. 



