SHOVELLER. 293 



of Europe, and, according to M. Baillon, the correspondent of 

 Buffon, breeds yearly in the marshes in France. The female is 

 said to make her nest on the ground, with withered grass, in 

 the midst of the largest tufts of rushes or coarse herbage, in the 

 most inaccessible part of the slaky marsh, and lays ten or twelve 

 pale rust coloured eggs; the young, as soon as hatched, are con- 

 ducted to the water by the parent birds. They are said to be 

 at first very shapeless and ugly, for the bill is then as broad as 

 the body, and seems too great a weight for the little bird to 

 carry. Their plumage does not acquire its full colours until af- 

 ter the second moult. 



The Blue winged Shoveller is twenty inches long, and two 

 feet six inches in extent; the bill is brownish black, three inches 

 in length, greatly widened near the extremity, closely pecti- 

 nated on the sides, and furnished with a nail on the tip of each 

 mandible; irides bright orange; tongue large and fleshy; the in- 

 side of the upper and outside of the lower mandible are groov- 

 ed so as to receive distinctly the long separated reed-like teeth; 

 there is also a gibbosity in the two mandibles, which do not 

 meet at the sides, and this vacuity is occupied by the. sifters 

 just mentioned; head and upper half of the neck glossy, change- 

 able green; rest of the neck and breast white, passing round 

 and nearly meeting above; whole belly dark reddish chestnut; 

 flanks a brownish yellow, pencilled transversely with black, 

 between which and the vent, which is black 5 is a band of white; 

 back blackish brown, exterior edges of the scapulars white; les- 

 ser wing coverts and some of the tertials a fine light sky-blue; 

 beauty spot on the wing a changeable resplendent bronze green, 

 bordered above by a band of white, and below with another of 

 velvetty black; rest of the wing dusky, some of the tertials 

 streaked down their middles with white; tail dusky, pointed, 

 broadly edged with white; legs and feet reddish orange, hind 

 toe not finned. 



With the above another was shot, which differed in having 

 the. breast spotted with dusky, and the back with white; the 

 green plumage of the head intermixed with gray, and the bel- 



