NIDIFICATION. 6l 



returned next day, picked up her chick, and 

 flew away with it. 



During nidification the male mallard casts its 

 light gaudy plumage, and assumes the dusky 

 brown plumage of its mate. Warburton, when 

 he wrote " To Him alone, who has ordered 

 the Ostrich to remain on the earth, and 

 allowed the Bat the range through the ethereal 

 vault of heaven, is known why the drake for 

 a very short period of the year should be so 

 completely clothed in the raiment of the female 

 that it requires a keen and penetrating eye to 

 distinguish one from other. . . . Neither in 

 the poultry yards of civilized man, nor through 

 the vast expanse of Nature's wildest range, 

 can there be found a drake in that plumage, 

 which, at all other seasons of the year, is so 

 remarkably splendid and diversified," was evi- 

 dently not aware that the male of the domestic 

 Rouen Duck, which corresponds exactly to the 

 mallard in colour of plumage, undergoes the 

 same transformation or moult of plumage each 



