82 AMERICAN GAME. 



tail covert the same color. Flanks brown, barred with 

 dusky ; lower part of the hind neck and fore part of the 

 back undulated with brownish and light brownish red, 

 hind part undulated with grayish white; primaries 

 brown ; outer webs of the inner secondaries black, mar- 

 gined with white inner webs grayish brown ; secondary 

 coverts white, tipped with black; speculum brilliant 

 green, formed by the middle secondaries. Length 

 twenty-one inches, wing ten and a half. Female smaller, 

 plumage duller, without the green markings." 



The "Widgeon breeds in the extreme north, beyond the 

 reach of the foot of civilized man, in the boundless mosses 

 and morasses, prodigal of food and shelter, of Labrador, 

 and Boothia Felix, and the fur countries, where it spends 

 the brief but ardent summer in the cares of nidification, 

 and the reproduction of its species. 



During the spring and autumn, it is widely distributed 

 throughout the Union, from the fresh lakes of the north- 

 west to the shores of the ocean, but it is most abundant, 

 as well as most delicious where the wild rice, Zizania, 

 pannicula effusa, the wild celery, Balisneria Americana, 

 and the eel-grass, Zostera Jfarina, grow most luxuriously. 

 On these it fares luxuriously, and becomes exceedingly 

 fat, and most delicate and succulent eating, being almost 

 entirely a vegetable feeder, and as such, devoid of any 

 fishy or sedgy flavor. 



In the spring and autumn it is not unfrequently shot 

 in considerable numbers, from skiffs, on the mud banks 



