326 AMERICAN GAME. 



however, very remarkable, that I cannot discover that 

 the Canvas-Back is ever seen or known to visit the great 

 Upper Lakes, where the Read-Head is also rare, though 

 Widgeon and Scaup abound, and though the northern 

 tributaries of Lake Huron, as well as the flats of the 

 Lake St. Clair are overgrown with all the various plants 

 in which they most delight, both the Valisneria Ameri- 

 cana, and the zizania panicula effusa^ known as wild 

 rice, flourishing in wonderful profusion, and imparting 

 their peculiar qualities of flavor, tenderness, and juci- 

 ness to all the tribes of water-fowl, even the least worthy, 

 which haunt these deep, ice-cold, translucent waters. 

 The only solution I can offer for this seeming anomaly, 

 for all the other ducks pause to recruit awhile in those 

 favorable feeding-grounds while on their southward 

 course, is that the Canvas-Back and Red-Head do not 

 move en masse from the northern sea-shores, until those 

 great inland waters are girdled around their margins, 

 and winter-bound along their tributary streams by fetters 

 of thick-ribbed ice, and that the fowl in consequence 

 pass over without pausing or becoming known, to their 

 great detriment, to the red or white inhabitants of the 

 coast. Certain it is, that they are unknown to the 

 Indian tribes who dwell on the shores or islands of Lake 

 Huron, and that the officers of the English posts who 

 have known them elsewhere, ignore them here. 



To compensate, however, for our ignorance concerning 

 their summer habits, haunts, and proceedings, we are 



