THE CANVAS-BACK DUCK. 325 



tlie eye, and the throat, are dusky ; the sides of the 

 head, neck all round and the greater part of its length, 

 rich, ruddy chestnut ; the lower neck, breast, and back, 

 deep, sooty black, the rest of the back white, closely 

 undulated with narrow black lines; the wing-coverts 

 gray, speckled with black ; primaries and secondaries 

 light slate color; rump tail-coverts and tail, blackish; 

 lower breast and abdomen, white ; flanks white, finely 

 undulated with gray ; under tail-coverts, grayish-black. 



The female is inferior in size to the male, and general- 

 ly of a dingy, grayish-brown, except the abdomen, 

 which is white, penciled with blackish lines. 



This bird is unknown except on this continent, never 

 being found in Europe ; and of its habits, except during 

 the winter months, which it spends in our sea-bays and 

 estuaries, little or nothing has been ascertained, so that 

 of all its most interesting peculiarities in nidification, 

 incubation, and the rearing of its young, we are almost 

 wholly ignorant. 



That it breeds in the extreme north we are, of course, 

 assured, and that it is not averse to a more than mode- 

 rate degree of cold, since it stays with us even after the 

 ice has made, when it can feed only through air-holes, 

 and is never found far south of the capes of the Chesa- 

 peake. It does not, moreover, become very abundant 

 even on those its favorite waters, until the cold weather 

 has fairly set in, about the middle of November, and a 

 month later it is considered to be in its prime. It is, 



