264 ANATID^. 



in Natural History, and these are among the earliest repre- 

 sentations of this species. Plate 99 represents an adult 

 male, brought from Newfoundland, where, on account of its 

 variegated plumage, it is called the Painted Duck. Plate 

 157 is a representation of a female brought from Hudson's 

 Bay, where the male, from his fine appearance, is called the 

 Lord Duck. 



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 the 

 Bay of Fundy. There they place their nests vmder the 

 bushes, or amid the grass, at the distance of twenty or thirty 

 yards from the water. Farther 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 are laid, the 

 female plucks the down from the lower parts of her body, 

 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 arduous, but, no doubt, to 

 her pleasant, task of hatching and rearing the brood, and, 

 joining his idle companions, returns to the sea-shore, where 

 he moults in July and August." 



The adult male has the bill bluish-black ; the irides 

 orange ; forehead, crown, back of the neck, around the eyes, 

 the cheeks, and sides of the neck, bluish-black, tinged with 

 violet colour ; at the base of the bill, and on the ear-coverts, 



