442 



WEB-FOOTED BIRDS. 



Tornea, within the Arctic circle, and nearly to the northern 

 extremity of Europe. The inhabitants, for the value of 

 the eggs, take the trouble to accommodate these useful and 

 almost domestic birds, by attaching hollowed pieces of wood 

 to the stunted Pine trees in which they ordinarily breed. 

 They extend their summer residence as far as Northern 

 Asia and Greenland, yet in Europe some pairs are observed 

 to propagate even in temperate countries. 



Although furnished with a remarkably complicated tra- 

 chea in the male, and the name of Clangula, we cannot 

 learn that they ever possess any audible voice. When 

 flushed they rise in silence, and we then only hear, instead 

 of a cry or a quack, the very perceptible and noisy whistling 

 of their short and laboring wings, for which reason they 

 are here sometimes called by our gunners the Brass-Eyed 

 Whistlers. In their native haunts they are by no means 

 shy, allowing the sportsman to make a near approach, as 

 if conscious at the same time of their impunity from ordi- 

 nary peril, for no sooner do they perceive the flash of the 

 gun, or hear the twang of the bow, than they dive with a 

 dexterity which sets the sportsman at defiance, and they 

 continue it so loner and with such remarkable success that 

 the aboriginal natives have nick-named them as conjuring 

 or ' Spirit Ducks.' 



The food of the Golden Eye, for which they are often 

 seen diving, consists of shell-fish, fry, small reptiles, insects, 

 small Crustacea, and tender marine plants. In and near 

 fresh waters they feed on fluviatile vegetables, such as the 

 roots of Equisetums, and the seeds of some species of Poll/' 

 gonum. Their flesh, particularly that of the young, is gen- 

 erally well flavored, though inferior to that of several other 

 kinds of Ducks. 



In Europe, they descend in their migrations to the south 

 along the coasts of the ocean, as far as Italy, where they are 



