38 



ments from many observers. Mr. W. B. Mershon, Saginaw, 

 Michigan (author of "The Passenger Pigeon"), says: "Fre- 

 quently Canvasbacks have to be gotten up from below the 

 surface dead;" but he believes this is due to weed entangle- 

 ment. Mr. J. K. Jensen, Santa Fe, New Mexico, asserts that 

 he has never seen a duck when wounded cling to the bottom 

 until death, but he has known a wounded duck to die entangled 

 in weeds at the bottom of a water hole in a peat bog. Dr. 

 Arthur A. Allen says that a wounded Florida Gallinule dived 

 and was caught in the pond-weeds so that it never came up. 



Female. Male. 



RUDDY DUCK (Erismatura jamaicensis) . 

 (From "Game Birds, Wild-Fowl and Shore Birds.") 

 A diving Duck which when wounded sometimes goes to the bottom and stays there. 



It was not, however, holding on by its bill. Mr. Edwin C. 

 Kent of New York City, notes that when he was duck-shooting 

 on the Hudson River, where flats were overgrown with eelgrass, 

 it was a common occurrence for a wounded diving duck 

 Canvasback, Red-head, Scaup or Golden-eye to dive and 

 vanish. He says "two or three times when poking about with 

 an oar I have brought up a bird dead." He believes that the 

 birds became entangled in the grass and were too weak to free 

 themselves. Mr. A. W. Schorges, Madison, Wisconsin, relates 

 a similar occurrence with a Canvasback. 



Mr. Ralph Hubbard, Boulder, Colorado, says that when he 

 was trapping Black Ducks and Mallards on Lake Cayuga, New 

 York, in connection with some experiments carried on in 1917 



