VELVET DUCK. 355 



ber merely appear for a few days on their way farther north, but some 

 remain to breed on the southern coast of Labrador. Thousands of sterile 

 individuals, however, spend the summer on the Bay of Fundy. 



During the breeding season, the Velvet Duck resembles the Eider in 

 its habits, only that it prefers fresh water, Avhich is rarely the case with 

 the other species. The males leave the females after incubation has com- 

 menced. Those which breed at Labrador begin to form their nests from 

 the 1st to the 10th of June, and on the 28th of July I caught some young 

 ones several days old. The nests are placed within a few feet of the bor- 

 ders of small lakes, a mile or two distant from the sea, and usually under 

 the low boughs of the bushes, of the twigs of which, with mosses and va- 

 rious plants matted together, they are formed. They are large and almost 

 flat, several inches thick, with some feathers of the female, but no down, 

 under the eggs, which are usually six in number, intermediate in size be- 

 tween those of the Eider and King Ducks, measuring an inch and three 

 quarters in length, one and seven-eighths in breadth, of a uniform pale 

 cream colour tinged with green, not pure white as stated by some authors- 

 On the 28th of July I procured five young ones out of a brood of six, among 

 which, although to appearance scarcely a week old, I could readily dis- 

 tinguish the males from the females as they swam on the little pond 

 around their mother, the former having already a white spot imder the eye. 

 The down with which they were covered was rather stiff and hair-like, of 

 a black colour, excepting under the chin, where there was a small patch 

 of white. They swam with great ease, and when we drove them into a 

 narrow place for the purpose of catching them, they several times turned 

 upon us and dived with the view of getting back to the middle of the 

 pond, so that at last we found it necessary to shoot them. Only one 

 escaped ashore, which my young friend Thomas Lincoln caught, but 

 afterwards restored to its mother, which continued on the pond, manifest- 

 ing the greatest anxiety, and calling to her brood all the v/hile with 

 short squeaking notes, by no means unpleasant to the ear. On being- 

 shot at, she flew off to another pond, but soon returned. Her plumage 

 was rusty and ragged, but the wings seemed to be complete, as she flew 

 with great ease, springing at once from the water. 



Mr Jones of Bras d'Or assured me, that either that individual or an- 

 other of the same species, had bred on the same pond for six or seven 

 years in succession, and that he had looked at the nest and observed her 

 manners when leading about the young, which he said did not leave the 



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