842 SHOVELER 
the surface of the water immediately above the spot where Diving 
Ducks (PocHARD) are employing themselves beneath. On such 
occasions a pair of Shovelers may be watched, almost for the hour 
together, swimming in a circle, about a yard in diameter, their 
heads turned inwards towards its centre, their bills immersed 
vertically in the water, and engaged in sifting, by means of the 
long lamelle before mentioned, the floating matters that are dis- 
turbed by their submerged allies and rise to the top. These 
gyrations are executed with the greatest ease, each Shoveler of the 
pair merely using the outer leg to impel it on its circular course, 
and to the observer the prettiest part of the performance is the pre- 
cision with which each preserves its relative distance from its 
partner. 
Four other species of the genus Spatula, all possessing the 
characteristic light blue “shoulders,” have been described :—one, S. 
platalea, from the southern parts of South America, having the 
head, neck and upper back of a pale reddish-brown, freckled or 
closely spotted with dark brown, and a dull, bay breast with inter- 
rupted bars ; a second, S. capensis, from South Africa, much lighter 
in colour than the female of S. clypeata; a third and a fourth, S. 
rhynchotis and S. variegata, from Australia and New Zealand 
respectively,—these last much darker in general coloration, and 
the males possessing a white crescentic mark between the bill and 
the eye,’ but so much resembling each other that their specific dis- 
tinctness is denied by good authority (cf. Salvadori, Cat. B. Br. Mus. 
xxvii. p. 315). In these last two the sexual difference is well 
marked by the plumage; but in the South-American and South- 
African species it would seem that both male and female have much 
the same appearance, as is the case with so many species of the re- 
stricted genus Anas, though this cannot yet be asserted with certainty. 
Apparently allied to the genus Spatula is Malacorhynchus 
membranaceus, the “ Pink-eye” 
of Australians—so called from 
a spot of that colour, so un- 
common in birds, just behind the 
eye in the drakes—which has a 
soft and flexible maxilla, having 
near the end on either side a triangular cutaneous flap. It has 
lamelle highly developed; but its fasciated plumage of greyish- 
brown and white has no resemblance to that of any member of 
the genus Spatula. Another bird possessing somewhat similar 
Bit oF MALAcoRuYNcHUs. (After Swainson.) 
1 This mark is observable in several forms of Anatidex, and especially in the 
Blue-winged and Cinnamon Trats of America, Anas or Querquedula discors and 
cyanoptera, species which not only exhibit in a still greater degree the blue 
‘“‘shoulders” of the Shoveler, but also have very well-developed damed/x on the 
basal half of the bill. 
