WATER FOWL OF INDIA AND ASIA. 3 
armed at the edges of both chaps (mandtbles) with a row 
of transverse ridges or teeth (/amelle), and the feet have 
moderate or short shanks (favsz) and three toes in front 
webbed together, and a small, nearly or quite useless toe 
behind, not connected with the front ones by a web. 
It may be as well to point out how these characters 
exclude all pretenders to the dignity of Ducks. Coots, 
Phalaropes or Swimming Snippets, and Dabchicks and 
other Grebes, are at once excluded, not only by their 
beaks, which are not in the least like a Duck’s, but 
especially by their feet, of which the toes are not webbed 
together, but provided each with a separate and indivi- 
dual web. 
Flamingoes have ridged beaks like Ducks, but the 
beak is bent suddenly downwards in the middle, and the 
shanks are very long. 
Cormorants, Pelicans and their allies, not only have 
not the ridged beak but the hind toe is well developed, 
and joined to the front ones by an extension of the web 
which unites these. 
Gulls, Terns and Petrels have a plain-edged beak, 
though their feet are very like those of Ducks, except 
that in the last the hind toe is reduced to a nail only. 
As for those birds which swim, though without any 
web to their feet, such as Moorhens, no one has any 
business to mistake them for Ducks at all. 
General Account of the Ducks. 
Before proceeding to distinguish the various sections 
of the Duck family, a little more about its general 
characteristics may be noted. The most marked pecu- 
liarity about the Duck’s billis of course its ridged edges ; 
this ridge arrangement presenting, as was pointed out by 
Darwin, a beautiful gradation in various species from 
simple teeth to processessolong that they fairly repre- 
sent whalebone in miniature. This is well seen in the 
