GOOSANDER. 461 



Iceland and Greenland. Many, however pass the breeding 

 season in the Orkneys, and these scarcely ever find any ne- 

 cessity to migrate. They are seen in small families or com- 

 panies of six or eight in the United States in winter, and 

 frequent the sea shores, lakes and rivers, continually diving 

 in quest of their food which consists principally of fish and 

 shelly mollusca. They are also very gluttonous and vora- 

 cious, like the Albatross sometimes swallowing a fish too 

 large to enter whole into the stomach, which therefore lodges 

 in the oesophagus till the lower part is digested before the 

 remainder can follow. The roughness of the tongue, cov- 

 ered with incurved projections, and the form of the bent 

 serratures which edge the bill, appear all purposely contrived 

 with reference to its piscatory habits. In the course of the 

 season they migrate probably to the extremity of the Union, 

 being seen in winter in the Mississippi and Missouri, from 

 whence at the approach of spring they migrate north or into 

 the interior to breed. 



The Goosander is seen to frequent the coast only in the 

 depth of winter ; and in its remote resorts in the north it 

 fears the cold much less tlran the ice ; as in that condition 

 its supply of food is necessarily cut off. According to Pen- 

 nant, one was seen in Helsincreland in the month of Jan- 

 uary, during a period of the most intense cold. It is said 

 to lay 12 to 14 whitish eggs, almost equally pointed at both 

 ends, nesting sometimes in hollow trees, on the ground, or 

 in the shelter of grass and bushes. The extent of the 

 breeding range in this species, as among many other retir- 

 ing birds, is yet far from being sufficiently ascertained. 

 Early in the month of May (1832), while descending the 

 Susquehannah near to Dunnstown, a few miles below the 

 gorge of the Alleghanys, through which that river meanders 

 near the foot of the Bald Eagle Mountain, G. Lyman, Esq. 

 and myself observed near the head of a little bushy island^ 

 39* 



