WATERFOWL 
wandering albatross to soar for days together 
over the illimitable ocean. With one notice- 
able exception, these waterfowl exhibit a 
more extraordinary range of size and weight 
than any other family of birds, from the 
whooper swan, five feet long and twenty-five 
pounds on the scales, down to the little teal, 
with an overall measurement of only fourteen 
inches and a weight that does not exceed as 
many ounces. The only other family of birds 
running to such extremes is that of the birds 
of prey, which include at once the stately 
condor of the Andes with its wing-spread of 
fifteen feet, and the miniature red-legged 
falconet of India and adjoining countries, 
in which the same measurement would 
scarcely reach as many inches. 
Since even game birds are derisively re- 
ferred to as " tame " only by those ignorant of 
the facts, the birds now under notice differ in 
this respect from all those previously dealt 
with ; and they are geographically apart, 
again, from our other domesticated animals, 
since they are not, like the barndoor fowl 
and most of the rest, of Asiatic origin, but 
must often, in the grey of a winter morning, 
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