i82 PROPAGATION OF WILD BIRDS 



comb and other well-known people. His publications go 

 into full detail in directing customers as to the sowing or 

 planting of all the important wild-duck foods. Among 

 those which he describes and handles are duck potato or 

 wapato, wild celery, wild rice, peppergrass or watercress, 

 American lotus or water chinquapin, nut-grass or chufa, 

 blue duck millet, ajid others of the hardy potamogetons or 

 pond weeds. 



Wapato. To refer briefly to a few of these plants which 

 are best known and of which ducks are fond, the wapato or 

 duck potato is an excellent food, with its succulent bulbs 

 and shoots, andspreads rapidly by bulbs, runners, and seeds. 

 It grows in shallow water or on moist ground which is an- 

 nually overflowed. It is best started by bulbs or by trans- 

 planting. Mr. Terrell advises about a thousand plants to 

 the acre, six feet apart, in water a foot or less in depth. 

 The proper time to plant is during the summer months. 



Wild Celery. Wild celery is an eel grass, growing on mud 

 or loam bottom in fresh or sHghtly brackish water from 

 i^ to 8 feet deep. It is a perennial, and produces seed- 

 pods after the second or third year from planting. It also 

 spreads by runners. The best time to plant is in the 

 fall before freezing, the natural time that it goes to seed. 

 It can also be sown in spring if the seed is always kept moist 

 and is stored in a cool place to prevent fermentation. The 

 main reason why people have failed in sowing wild celery 

 or wild rice is that if the seed of these water plants is ever 

 allowed to dry, it will never germinate. About two or two 

 and a half bushels of seed to the acre is Mr. Terrell's advice. 

 He also suggests, especially where the bottom is rather hard, 

 to mix clay with water, make little balls, as of putty, insert 

 a little seed in each, and drop into the water. Plants, he 

 says, should be set out about three feet apart, being set in 



