THE GREEN-WINGED TEAL. 239 



being less susceptible of cold, and tarrying on the Great 

 Lakes till the frosts set in with sufficient severity to pre- 

 vent its frequenting its favorite haunts with pleasure, or 

 obtaining its food with facility. It is rarely or never 

 seen in the Middle States during the summer, but is 

 tolerably abundant during the autumn on all the marshy 

 lakes and pools, and along the shores of all the reedy 

 rivers from the Great Lakes downward to the sea-board, 

 though, like the last named species, it is purely a fresh- 

 water duck, never frequenting the sea-shores or salt-bays, 

 finding no food thereon with which to gratify its delicate 

 and fastidious palate, which, eschewing fish, the larvae 

 of insects, and the lesser Crustacea, relishes only the 

 seeds of the various water plants and grasses, the tender 

 leaves of some vegetables, and more especially the grain 

 of the wild rice, Zizania panicula, effusa, which is its 

 favorite article of subsistence, and one to which may be 

 ascribed the excellence of every bird of air or water 

 which feeds on it, from the Rice-Bird and the Rail, to 

 the Teal, the Canvass-Back, and even the large Thick- 

 Billed Fuligula, closely allied to the Scoter, the Yelvet 

 Duck, and other uneatable sea-fowl of Lake Huron, 

 which are scarcely, if at all, "inferior to the Red-Heads 

 of Chesapeake Bay, the Gunpowder, or the Potomac. 

 On the Susquehanna and the Delaware, both these 

 beautiful little ducks were in past years excessively 

 abundant, so that a good gunner, paddling one of the 

 sharp, swift skiffs peculiar to those waters, was certain 



