SCAUP DUCK. 243 



membrane that separates them from the other viscera ; this 

 last was much thickened, and all the cavity within was cover- 

 ed with mucor, or blue mould." 



" It is a most cvirious circumstance," this writer adds, " to 

 find this vegetable production growing within a living animal, 

 and shows that where air is pervious, mould will be found to 

 obtain, if it meets with sufficient moisture, and a place con- 

 genial to vegetation. Now the fact is, that the part on 

 which this vegetable was growing was decayed, 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 

 vitality, 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." 



M. Deslongchamps has found a similar growth lining the 

 air-cells in the lungs of an Eider Duck ;* and Mr. Owen 

 described the same appearance as found by himself in the 

 bronchial tubes of a Flamingo. -j- References to descriptions 

 and figures of various singular vegetable growths on insects, 

 will be found in the first Part of the third volume of the 

 Transactions of the Entomological Society of London ; and 

 those acquainted with Edwards'* Gleanings in Natural History, 

 will remember his coloured representations of vegetating 

 caterpillars, and vegetating wasps, in the plates numbered 

 S35 and 336, published many years since. 



In spring, the Scaup Ducks depart to countries north of the 



* Annals of Natural History, vol. viii. page 229. 



t Proceedings of the Zoological Society for 1832, page 142, 



R 2 



