33i AMEKICAN GAME. 



'At first sight, I was satisfied that the bird in question, 

 one of which was included in the lot, among scaup, or 

 broad-bills, as "they are commonly designated on the 

 Atlantic seaboard, mallards, dusky-duck and wood-duck, 

 was a nondescript ; and 1 laid it aside to sketch and 

 describe at my leisure. I soon perceived, however, that 

 it had been much mutilated, all the secondaries having 

 been plucked out, and the upper tail-coverts torn away, in 

 order to get at the kernal, from which the birds preen 

 themselves, and which the Indians of that region inva- 

 riably cut away^ and appropriate, for what purpose I 

 could not learn. 



In the meantime, I could learn nothing of the bird 

 among the settlers in the neighborhood, most of them 

 pensioners from the English army, except that it was 

 not uncommon in the fall, in the great bay to the north- 

 ward of the Manitoulins. The staff-surgeon at the post, 

 himself a good naturalist, was ignorant of the bird, 

 and we carefully examined our specimen by such au- 

 thorities as were contained in his library, Audubon and 

 "Wilson, as well as some small English compendiums on 

 the subject among the number, arriving at the conclu- 

 sion that it certainly was not described in any of these 

 works. 



Nearly a month afterward, being one of a sporting 

 party, which made a canoeing excursion of a week or 

 ten days, up the Matchedash or Severn river, which dis- 

 charges the waters of Lake Sincoe, lying midway of the 



