86



Mr. Frank Finn,



The ducklings of the tame duck were, however, very peculiar

— all sooty black except for a yellow patch on the fore-neck ; in some

this yellow was succeeded by some white feathers, but in all, the

portions of the immature plumage—cheeks, forehead, and under¬

parts—which are white-edged in the type, were edged with brown,

which resulted in the young birds looking at a little distance com¬

pletely black all over. The two which were kept to adult age,

however—a drake and a duck — assumed the white wing'-patch as

usual, and no one would have known they had been melanistic in

the downy stage. The drake also, as in the normal-coloured form,

developed white feathers round the eyes before becoming bare there ;

the duck, curiously enough, has developed these feathers but as

yet has not become bare there.


She was mated to the wild drake — as her mother should have

been in my opinion—this year, and laid when much less than a year

old, and before her white wing patch was developed. Only one duck¬

ling, a normal one, was hatched from her first clutch, and this soon

died ; from her second six were hatched, two of the normal yellow-

bellied and faced form, and four all sooty-black, without any yellow

on the neck ; the mother, by the way, was one of those which bad

no white feathers on the neck.


These ducklings are now Hedged ; the two normal-coloured

ones have the normal white-edged immature plumage, the others

have the forehead, cheeks, and underparts edged with brown instead

of white, and look all black a little way off. None have their grand¬

mother’s white neck-patch. Meanwhile the said grandmother has

had another brood by the same tame drake, just like the first, all

black with yellow neck-patches.


Unfortunately there is no means of knowing what this tame

drake was like as a duckling, but as the half-wild duck when mated

to him still bred normal-coloured young, and as his daughter by his

tame mate still breeds some dark young (even darker than her

mother’s, being without yellow neck-patch) even when mated to the

wild drake, it seems that for this new dark variety of the duckling

she alone is responsible; she is, in fact, a highly dominant bird in

this respect.


It is curious, however, that while even the three-quarter-bred



