TUFTED DUCK. 75 
mollusea, young frogs and tadpoles, and the roots, seeds, and 
buds of plants. 
These birds breed along the stony shores of the sides of 
inland waters, both lakes and rivers, among the cover of 
vegetation, more or less thick, with which such are usually 
bordered. 
The receptacle for the eggs, for it can hardly be called a 
nest, is composed of stalks and grasses. It is not made till 
the end of May or beginning of June. 
The eggs vary in number from eight to ten. They are of 
a pale buff colour, with a tinge of green. 
The male bird leaves the female after she has begun to sit. 
This species, as Frederick Bond, Esq. has informed me, 
paired with the Ferruginous Duck, as I have mentioned in 
the account of the latter, in the year 1853 or 1854, in the 
gardens of the Zoological Society. 
It is a thick-set bird. Male; weight, about twenty-five 
ounces; Montagu says that they vary, according to the condition 
they are in, from twenty-one to thirty-one ounces; length, 
one foot five inches; bill, deep bluish lead-colour, a portion 
of the tip and the tooth black: it is rather widened towards 
the point. Iris, golden yellow. There is a long dependant 
erest of very narrow black feathers, with purple and green 
reflections. The head, neck, and nape, are of the same colour. 
At the chin is a small triangular-shaped white mark; throat 
and breast, on the upper part black, the feathers tipped with 
grey; below, the latter is glossy white, or cream-coloured 
white, the thighs blackish. Back, dusky olive brown, with 
a slight violet tinge, very minutely speckled with grey, or 
yellowish white, which gives a subdued tone to the colouring 
of this part, the lower portion black. 
The wings have the first and second quill feathers of nearly 
equal length; greater wing coverts, white, the tips broadly 
finished with black; lesser wing coverts, dusky olive black. 
The first three or four primaries pale brown, dusky olive 
black on the outer webs and the tips, the rest more or less 
white towards the base; of the secondaries the four or five 
inner ones are Cusky olive black, the remainder forming the 
speculum white, with greenish black tips, and slightly edged 
with the same colour; tertiaries, dusky greenish olive black, 
minutely spotted with grey or yellowish white. The tail, 
which consists of fourteen feathers, and is short and somewhat 
wedge-shaped, is black; upper tail coverts, black; under tail 
