45 



on the Choptank River, near Cambridge, Dorchester County, 

 Maryland. It clung to some weeds at the bottom and was dis- 

 lodged with an oar. It was not quite dead, but expired within 

 a minute or two. 



Mr. Wilfrid Wheeler, Concord, Massachusetts, former Massa- 

 chusetts Commissioner of Agriculture, writes me as follows: 



I shot a Black Duck over a marshy pond. It fell in front of me, disap- 

 peared under water and did not come up. I waded in, and felt the bird 



Female. Male. 



MERGANSER (Mergus americanus) . 

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



ine Merganser, a "saw-bill duck," when wounded sometimes clings to reeds or other vege- 

 tation under water and dies there. 



at the bottom where the water was perhaps 20 inches deep. I pulled it 

 up dead and found its bill full of the weeds which grow in the pond. It 

 was possibly fifteen minutes after I shot the duck before I got it. 



Mr. Frank M. Woodruff, curator at the Chicago Academy of 

 Arts and Sciences, writes that while w r ading in a marsh at 



