54 GOOSANDER. 



some asserting that tliey build on trees ; others that they make their 

 nests among the rocks. 



The male of this species is twenty-six inches in length, and three feet 

 three inches in extent, the bill three inches long, and nearly one inch 

 thick at the base, serrated on both mandibles ; the upper overhanging 

 at the tip, where each is furnished with a large nail ; the ridge of the 

 bill is black, the sides crimson red ; irides red ; head crested, tumid, 

 and of a black color glossed with green, which extends nearly half way 

 down the neck, the rest of which, with the breast and belly, are white 

 tinged with a delicate yellowish cream ; back and adjoining scapulars 

 black ; primaries and shoulder of the wing brownish black ; exterior 

 part of the scapulars, lesser coverts, and tertials white ; secondaries 

 neatly edged with black, greater coverts white, their upper halves black, 

 forming a bar on the wing, rest of the upper parts and tail brownish 

 ash ; legs and feet the color of red sealing-wax ; flanks marked with 

 fine semicircular dotted lines of deep brown ; the tail extends about 

 three inches beyond the wings. 



This description was taken from a full plumaged male. The young 

 males, which are generally much more numerous than the old ones, so 

 exactly resemble the females in their plumage for at least the first, and 

 part of the second year, as scarcely to be distinguished from them ; and 

 what is somewhat singular, the crests of these and of the females are 

 actually longer than those of the full grown male, though thinner 

 towards its extremities. These cix'cumstances have induced some late 

 Ornithologists to consider them as two difi"erent species, the young, or 

 female, having been called the Dun Diver. By this arrangement they 

 have entirely deprived the Goosander of his female ; for in the whole 

 of my examinations and dissections of the present species, I have never 

 yet found the female in his dress. What I consider as undoubtedly the 

 true female of this species is figured beside him. They were both shot 

 in the month of April, in the same creek, unaccompanied by any other, 

 and on examination the sexual parts of each were strongly and promi- 

 nently marked. The windpipe of the female had nothing remarkable 

 in it ; that of the male had two very large expansions, which have been 

 briefly described by Willoughby, who says : " It hath a large bony 

 labyrinth on the windpipe, just above the divarications ; and the wind- 

 pipe hath besides two swellings out, one above another, each resembling 

 a powder puff." These labyrinths are the distinguishing characters of 

 the males ; and are always found even in young males Avho have not yet 

 thrown off the plumage of the female, as well as in the old ones. If 

 we admit these Dun Divers to be a distinct species, we can find no differ- 

 ence between their pretended females and those of the Goosander, only 

 one kind of female of this sort being known, and this is contrary to the 

 usual analogy of the other three species, viz., the Red-breasted Mer- 



