THK HAKI.KQUIN' DUCK. 557 



on its being discharged, disappear with the swiftness of thought, and, perhaps, as 

 quickly rise again within a few yards, as if to ascertain the cause of their alarm. When 

 these birds return to us from the north, the number of the yoving so much exceed that of 

 the old, that to find males in full plumage is much more uncommon than toward the time 

 of their departure, when I have thought the males as numerous as the females. Although 

 at times they are very fat, their flesh is fishy and disagreeable ; many of them, however, 

 lire offered' for sale in our markets. 



The note is a mere croak, much resembling that of the golden eye, but not so loud." 



THE SCAIT DUCK.* 



Colonel ilontagu, who kept both sexes of this species alive in confinement many years, 

 observed, that they associated together apart from all other ducks, made the same 

 grunting noise, and both had the same singular 'toss of the head, attended with an 

 opening of the bill, which, in the spring, is continued for a considerable time while 

 swimming and sporting on the water. This singular gesture would be sufficient to 

 identify the species were all other distinctions wanting. In the case of one female which 

 died, Montagu mentions that the cause of death appeared to be in the lungs, and in the 

 membrane that separates them from the other viscera ; this last was much thickened, and 

 all the cavity within was covered with mucor, or blue mould. 



" It is a most curious circumstance," this writer adds, " to find this vegetable 

 production gro\\-ing within a li\'ing animal, and shows that where air is pervious, mould 

 will be found to obtain, if it meets with sufficient moisture, and a place congenial to 

 vegetation. Xow the fact is, that the part on which this vegetable was growing was 

 deca3-ed, and had no longer in itself a living principle ; the dead part, therefore, became 

 the proper pabulum of the invisible seeds of the mucor, transmitted by the air in 

 respiration ; and thus nature carries on all her works immutably under every possible 

 variation of circumstance. It would indeed be impossible for .such to vegetate on a living 

 body, being incompatible with vitalit}^ ; and we may be assured that decay must take 

 place before this minute vegetable can make a lodgment to aid in the great change of 

 decomposition. Even with inanimate bodies, the appearance of mould, or any species of 

 fungi, is a sure presage of partial decay and decomposition." 



THE IIARLEIJUIN DUCK.t 



This species is well known to American ornithologists. Mr. Audubon says : " On the 

 31st of May, 1833, I found them breeding on White Head Island, and other much 

 smaller places of a similar nature, in the same part of tlie Bay of Fundy. There they 

 place their nests under the bushes, or amid the grass, at the distance of twenty or thirty 

 yards from the water. Further north, in Newfoundland and Labrador, for example, 

 they remove from the sea, and betake themselves to small lakes a mile or so in the 

 interior, on the margins of which they form their nests beneath the bushes next to the 

 water. The nest is composed of dry plants of various kinds, arranged in a circular 

 manner to the height of two or three inches, and lined with finer grasses. The eggs are 

 five or six, rarely more, measure two inches and one-sixteenth by one inch and nine- 

 sixteenths, and are of a plain greenish-yellow colour. After the eggs arc laid, the female 

 plucks the down from the lower parts of her bodj% and places it beneath and around 

 them, in the same manner as the eider duck and other species of this tribe. The male 

 leaves her to perform the ard\ious, but no doubt to her pleasant, task of hatching and 



* Alias Marila. ' t Anas Histrioiiica. 



