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Mr. Gordon Dargriesh,



I ought to mention that I do not use Mellins’ food as a

staple article of diet but only as a corrective. My staple food is

the usual milk sop made with powdered plain biscuit and fresh

milk diluted with about half its own bulk of water and slightly

sweetened. The Mellins is substituted for the biscuit and sugar

when there is any appearance of acidity or indigestion, and is

continued for three days. I have also tried peptonising the milk

with Fairchild’s Peptonising powders with great benefit to the

birds, and I believe this treatment of the milk would help many

a Tory that was not thriving.


All this sounds like giving a lot of trouble, but it is worth

a little trouble to have a healthy bird, and the trouble is not as

great as it looks.



THE WHITE-EYED DUCK.


Ny?oca fer?-uginea.


By Gordon Dargriesh.


The White-eyed Duck or Pochard is the smallest member

of the family of diving ducks. M)' own acquaintance with this

Pochard was made in Bengal, where it is exceedingly plentiful

during winter, and forms the greater part of a bag made in a

day’s duck shooting there. Charming little reed fringed pools

on marshes covered with water lilies, and deep broads where

there are plenty of weeds below the surface are the favourite

haunts of the White-eye. During the day, when the sun is well

up, it keeps to the shelter of the rushes, feeding little and

sleeping a lot. Very often one sees it searching among water

lily leaves, apparently feeding on small molluscs found there.

It keeps very much to itself, not mixing with other ducks, and

in parties of fives and sixes, and again in small flocks numbering

from twenty to thirty individuals. I have never found it a shy

bird, and one is pretty certain of bagging a few from every flock

that one comes across. When flushed it rises somewhat awk¬

wardly off the water accompanied with a good deal of whirring,

and when well on the wing the flight is extremely swift. As an

article of diet I can thoroughly recommend the White-Eye.

Personally I have never found them fishy or rank, though it



