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518 ORNITHOLOGY AND OOLOGY. 
sail-boat or float, pursues these birds with great activity. 
On approaching one’ of these large flocks, it is customary to 
steer the boat to the windward of it; for they, like most 
other fowls, always rise to the windward. When, therefore, 
the gunner arrives within gunshot, he fires into the flock 
while it is in the water; and when it rises, and flies to the 
windward, often directly over his boat, he pours into it 
sometimes three or four other charges before it gets out 
of shot. It is ‘a difficult bird to kill; and, when wounded, it 
always dives and clings to the bottom, where it dies. I once 
brought down seven birds out of a flock at one discharge, 
when they dove, and I did not secure one. Its flesh is oily 
and strong, and is in no repute for the table. 
MELANETTA, Borer. 
Feathers extending nearly as far forward on the sides of the bill as the nostril, 
leaving the edges only free from the base; bill very broad; nail broad and almost 
truncate. 
MELANETTA VELVETINA. — Baird. 
The Velvet Duck; White-winged Coot. 
Anas fusca, Wilson. Am. Orn., VIII. (1814) 187. 
Fuligulas ( Oidemia) fusca, Bonaparte. Syn. (1828), 890. Nutt. Man., II. 
(1834) 419. 
Fuligula fusca, Audubon. Orn. Biog., III. (1835) 354. Jb., Birds Am., VI. 
(1843) 332. : 
DESCRIPTION. 
Male. — Bill very broad, wider towards the tip than at the base; feathers extend- 
ing far along the side of the bill, and on the forehead, for nearly half the commissure, 
running in an obtuse point about as far forward as the lower corner of the outline of 
feathers on the side, both reaching nearly to the posterior border of the large, open, 
nearly rounded nostrils; culmen horizontal a little beyond the frontal feathers, then 
abruptly bent downwards, nearly perpendicularly, to the much-depressed, nearly 
horizontal portion; a sharp indented ridge along the base of culmen, ending in a 
trihedral tubercle; color black; a white elongated patch around and a little behind 
the eye, and a large white speculum on the wing, composed of white secondaries 
and tips of greater coverts; bill black at base and lateral edges; red elsewhere; iris 
bright-yellow. 
Female. — Somewhat similar, but lighter beneath; a large whitish patch on the 
side of the head behind the eye, but none around it; wings with white speculum, 
somewhat as in the male; bill also similar, but less swollen and elevated at base. 
