144 SEA FOWL IN NOVA SCOTIA—GILPIN, 
bills have become short and high, their forms more robust, necks 
shorter, and bodies losing the loug oval form of the typical black 
duck, and becoming round and humped, and the hind toe lobu- 
lated. With the exception of the Canvasback, of which I have 
noted two specimens, and the Ringneck, (F. collaris), the only 
specimens of which I have noted were kept alive by Mr. Downs, 
and I think were originally young taken in the eastern part 
of the Province, the other members of this group may be called 
common. The scaups, bluebills or blackheads, as they are 
variously called, come into the Bay of Fundy about the last of 
October and leave us in April. The specimens noted by me were 
all marilla, but a mounted specimen in Halifax Museum of affinis 
shows both forms to be present with us. The next group, which 
Dr. Baird has justly united in his new genus, Bugephala, the 
‘ goldeneye and buffleheads, are common, coming to the Bay of 
Fundy in October and leaving us in April. Though not so nu- 
merous as the common goldeneye, yet in some seasons the Ice- 
land species may be said to be plenty, in others rare. After a 
careful study of many specimens of each, both males and females 
and immature birds, I have been enabled to generalise that both 
males have the violet wash in the green of the head, though 
Richardson makes it typical in the Iceland species; that both 
females have the snuff yellow wash upon their heads, which my 
friend Mr. Boardman makes typical in the female Iceland; that 
there is a tendency in both females for the brown to run to 
dingy duck green on their heads, and that the party coloured bills 
in both females are very few in comparison with leaden coloured 
ones; that it appears in some young males, and their fewness can 
only be accounted for by considering them transient and becom- 
ing effaced by adult age. The anatomical difference in the 
trachea of the males, (paper read March 12, 1878,) must prove 
them distinct species. Before we notice the next group of purely 
pelagic duck, which never seek fresh water, are still shorter and 
rounder in figure, legs further behind, much better divers, but 
scarcely walkers at all, we may note that both these groups of 
pure freshwater fowl, and the intermediate one of partly fresh 
and sea fowl, although they do no doubt perform the semi-an- 
