224 ANAS VALISINERIA. 



if they can, they must be had, whatever may be the 

 price. 



The canvass-back will feed readily on grain, especially 

 wheat, and may be decoyed to particular places by bait in:? 

 them with that grain for several successive days. 8ome 

 few years since a vessel loaded with wheat u as wrecked 

 near the entrance of Great Egg; Harbour, in the autumn, 

 and went to pieces. The wheat floated out in vast 

 quantities, and the whole surface of the bay \vas in a 

 few days covered with ducks of a kind altogether 

 unknown to the people of that quarter. The gunners 

 of the neighbourhood collected in boats, in every 

 direction, shooting them ; and so successful were they, 

 that, as Mr Beasley informs me, two hundred and forty 

 were killed in one day, and sold among the neighbours, 

 at twelve and a half cents a-piece, without the feathers. 

 The wounded ones were generally abandoned, as being 

 too difficult to be come up with. They continued about 

 for three weeks, and during the greater part of that 

 time a continual cannonading was heard from every 

 quarter. The gunners called them sea ducks. They 

 were all canvass-backs, at that time on their way from 

 the north, when this floating feast attracted their 

 attention, and for a while arrested them in their course. 

 A pair of these very ducks I myself bought in Phila- 

 delphia market at the time, from an Egg Harbour 

 gunner, and never met with their superior either in 

 weight or excellence of flesh. When it was known 

 among those people the loss they had sustained in 

 selling for twenty-five cents what would have brought 

 them from a dollar to a dollar and a half per pair, 

 universal surprise and regret were naturally enough 

 excited. 



The canvass-back is two feet long, and three feet in 

 extent, and, when in good order, weighs three pounds; 

 the bill is large, rising high in the head, three inches in 

 length, and one inch and three-eighths thick at the 

 l;as, of a irl<> ss y black ; eye, very small ; irides, dark 

 red ; cheeks and fore part of the head, blackish brown ; 

 rest of the head and greater part of the neck, bright 



