SOMATERIA LABRADORIA. 209 



in possession of Sir Joseph Banks were brought. That described in the 

 'Arctic Zoology' came from Connecticut. Mr. Pennant thinks them the 

 same with the pretty Pied Ducks, which whistled as they flew or fed, met 

 with by Lawson in the west branch of Cape-Fear inlet. According to the 

 American ornithologists, this bird is subject, when young, to a progressive 

 change of colour. It frequents the sand-bars, its principal food being shell- 

 fish : hence called Sand-shoal Duck.'^ 



Audubon, in the 8vo edition of ' The Birds of America/ has a plate of 

 the male and female— vol. vi. (1843) p. 329, where he remarks :— 



''Although no birds of this species occurred to me when I was in 

 Labrador, my son, John Woodhouse, and the young friends who accom- 

 panied him, on the 28th of July 1833, to Blanc Sablon, found, placed on the 

 top of the low tangled fir bushes, several deserted nests which, from the 

 report of the English clerk of the fishing establishment there, we learned to 

 belong to the Pied Duck. They had much the appearance of those of the 

 Eider Duck, being very large, formed externally of fir twigs, internally of 

 dried grass, and lined with down. It would thus seem that the Pied Duck 

 breeds earlier than most of its tribe. 



" It is surprising that this species is not mentioned by Dr. Richardson 

 in the ' Fauna Boreali- Americana,' as it is a very hardy bird and is met with 

 along the coasts of Nova Scotia, Maine, and Massachusetts during the most 

 severe cold of winter. My friend Professor MacCulloch, of Pictou, has pro- 

 cured several in his immediate neighbourhood ; and the Hon. Daniel Webster, 

 of Boston, sent me a fine pair killed by himself on the Vineyard Islands, on 

 the coast of Massachusetts, from which I made the drawing for the plate 

 before you. The female has not, I believe, been hitherto figured ; yet the 

 one represented was not an old bird. 



" The range of this species along our shores does not extend further 

 southward than Chesapeake Bay, where I have seen some, near the influx of 

 the St. James river. I have also met with several in the Baltimore market. 



