guide him by her calls as the others did, she having 

 some minutes before gone out of sight and hearing. 

 The water of the river is exceedingly swift, yet his 

 swimming and diving was so strong and so expert 

 that in spite of the efforts of two men with pole and 

 paddle he leads us a chase of several hundred yards 

 before I finally secured him with the landing net. 



Their great strength and vitality encouraged me to 

 think that I could rear them and add them to those 

 captive ducks which are being maintained by one of 

 the friends of our birds, in the hopes of thus learning 

 how to propagate them in confinement and save the 

 species from possible ultimate extinction. 



The two young birds appeared to have quite dif- 

 ferent individual characters; one was tame but the 

 other savagely bit at me each time I tried to touch 

 him or offer him food. Both refused entirely to eat, 

 until finally on the second day I placed small parti- 

 cles of trout meat in the bottom of a large can of 

 water. This after an hour I found had disappeared 

 and the moist condition of the birds' breasts told the 

 story that they had swam in the can and picked the 

 food from the bottom. The next morning, alas ! both 

 were dead, lying on their backs, indicating that they 

 had not died peacefully but with a struggle, and I 

 fear that the fresh fish was too strong a diet for them. 



It might be thought that the shock of the fall from 

 the tree contributed to cause their death were it not 

 that the old bird and her brood were observed several 

 days later in the mouth of one of the back waters of 

 the river, locallj^ called Bogans; and also that the 



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