CANVAS-BACK DUCK. 109 



ducc. At our public dinners, liotek, and particular entertainments, 

 the Canvas-backs are universal favorites. They not only grace but 

 dignify the table, and their very name conveys to the imagination of 

 the eager epicure the most comfortable and exhilarating ideas. Hence 

 on such occasions it has not been uncommon to pay from one to three 

 dollars a pair for these ducks ; and, indeed, at such times, if they can 

 they must be had, whatever may be the price. 



The Canvas-back will feed readily on grain, especially wheat, and 

 may be decoyed to particular places by baiting them with that grain for 

 several successive days. Some few years since a vessel loaded with 

 wheat was wrecked near the entrance of Great Egg Harbor, in the 

 autumn, and went to pieces. The wheat floated out in vast quantities, 

 and the whole surface of the bay was in a few days covered with Ducks 

 of a kind altogether unknown to the people of that quarter. The gun- 

 ners of the neighborhood collected in boats, in every direction, shooting 

 them, and so successful were they, that, as Mr. Beasley informs me, 

 two hundred and forty were killed in one day, and sold among the 

 neighbors, at twelve and a half cents apiece, without the feathers. The 

 wounded ones were generally abandoned, as being too difficult to be 

 come up with. They continued about for three weeks, and during the 

 greater part of that time a continual cannonading was heard from every 

 quarter. The gunners called them Sea Ducks. They were all Canvas- 

 hacks, at that time on their way from the north, when this floating feast 

 attracted their attention, and for a while arrested them in their course. 

 A pair of these very Ducks I myself bought in Philadelphia market at 

 the time, from an Egg Harbor gunner, and never met with their 

 superior either in weight or excellence of flesh. When it was known 

 among those people the loss they had sustained in selling for twenty-five 

 cents what would have brought them from a dollar to a dollar and a 

 half per pair, universal surprise and regret Avere naturally enough 

 excited. 



The Canvas-back is two feet long, and three feet in extent, and when 

 in good order weighs three pounds ; the bill is large, rising high in the 

 head, three inches in length, and one inch and three-eighths thick at the 

 base, of a glossy black ; eye very small, irides dark red ; cheeks and 

 fore part of the head blackish brown ; rest of the head and greater 

 part of the neck bright glossy reddish chestnut, ending in a broad space 

 of black that covers the upper part of the breast, and spreads round to 

 the back ; back, scapulars, and tertials white, faintly marked with an 

 infinite number of transverse waving lines or points as if done with a 

 pencil ; whole lower parts of the breast, also the belly, white, slightly 

 pencilled in the same manner, scarcely perceptible on the breast, pretty 

 thick towards the vent ; wing coverts gray with numerous specks of 

 blackish ; primaries and secondaries pale slate, two or three of the 



