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from the water to a spring or other unfrozen place, if you follow them and if a bird is there it 

 will be most likely a wounded bird only. Can this be to prevent their being tracked by enemies. 



When noticing this beautiful thoroughbred-like bird, I would ask how many, who perhaps 

 eat his flesh (than which nothing is better when in good condition and properly cooked so 

 as to be juicy), have ever considered its beauty, either dead or alive? When alive, look at 

 him sitting in the water perhaps amusing himself as though washing, but which he cannot be 

 doing, as none of the water splashed over him wets his compactly placed feathers observe 

 the grace and elegance of his form when he comes up from a dive, with a few little round balls of 

 water moving on his back, but see how every one of them rolls like a pearl into the water 

 then see, after this amusement is over, how, with his silky feathered and glossy green and blue 

 head, he brushes the rest of his plumage into the most perfect order, and, after this is accom- 

 plished, he takes his rest, if in a wild state, till evening just before dark, when he almost 

 invariably flies to a distance to feed. 



I have sometimes seen a severely wounded drake get to the edge of the water, amongst willow 

 bushes, and then lie quite still, and even with its green head, not one person in a hundred would 

 see him, so well does his plumage answer to conceal him from observation and if this is so with 

 him, how much more so is it with the duck. How dreadfully this species has degenerated in beauty 

 of shape and plumage by domestication, and also in the quality and flavour of its flesh. The 

 marvellously elegant pointed scapular feathers, being those on the back and falling over the wings 

 of some drakes, more particularly in the Pintail and Garganey, seem to be so placed as to act as 

 guides to the pearly drops of water running off their backs; but are they? If they were, it 



