240 THE WILD DUCK 



be carried to the bitter end, without one slightly 

 compensating advantage. 



The wild duck is, like the raven, one of the most 

 cosmopolitan of birds. He eschews, indeed, the 

 eternal frosts of the Arctic circle, and the torrid 

 heats of the Equatorial region ; but almost every- 

 where else he is to be found. He is at home on the 

 fiords of Norway, on the mud-banks of the Guadal- 

 quiver, on the lakes of Mexico, amid the cataracts 

 and lagunes of the Nile. He abounds on Lake 

 Tchad, the heart of the African, and on Lob Nor, 

 the heart of the Asiatic continent. The moment 

 that Lake Sirikol, the cradle of the Oxus, high up 

 in the Pamir, the Roof of the World, begins to 

 thaw beneath the summer sun, its waters are 

 covered with fleets of the wild duck. He is to be 

 met with throughout North and Central America, 

 in the West Indies and the Azores, in Persia and 

 India, in China and Japan. One fact, no doubt, 

 which accounts for or illustrates this extraordinary 

 dispersion is that he is almost omnivorous. The 

 tender grass of the water-meadow, with the creep- 

 ing things that abound therein, the minute shell- 

 fish, and the molluscs of the stream or mud-bank, 

 the acorns strewn beneath the oak, the peas, or 

 beans, or grains of barley left upon the stubble- 



