SHOAL- WATER DUCKS. 



203 



the rice plantations of Georgia and the Carolinas, and there become, 

 if possible, more fat and palatable than in Illinois and Wisconsin. 

 In Florida, too, they are plenty, and twenty-five years ago were 

 sometimes seen in such numbers as to darken the sky, and we know 

 of one instance in that State where one hundred and twenty Mal- 

 lards were bagged in a single day by one man, and that long 

 before decoys, sink-boxes, sneak-boats, batteries, and all other 

 engines of destruction had been thought of in this country. The 

 flight of the Mallard is swift, strong, and well sustained. He 

 rises from the water at a single spring, and having attained a height 

 of ten yards, or, in woods, above the tree-tops, shoots off with great 

 rapidity. Their flight has been computed at over a mile per minute 

 when flying steadily. Their loud quacking is always heard as they 

 start up. Mallards are easily raised, and, if a nest of eggs is found, 

 they may be transferred to a setting-hen or barnyard duck. The 

 period of incubation is about four weeks. In closing we can not 

 refrain from expressing the wish that the protection of this bird 

 were better looked to. In a land where nature has been so lavish in 

 her gifts, we pay too little heed to her unwritten laws. We see year 

 after year the most evident diminution in the numbers of almost every 

 class of game, animal and fish, yet we do not learn the lesson. We 

 wish to impress upon our legislators and those who draft our game 

 laws, the necessity of close co-operation, and of uniformity in the 

 demarcation of close seasons, so far as climatic conditions permit. 



A nas obscura. — Gmclin. Black Duck. Dusky Duck, Black Mallard. 



The Black Duck is about the size of the Mallard, and resembles 

 the- female of that species excepting that the general tone of the 

 coloration is much darker, being brownish black in some places, 

 and Jighter below. Bill yellowish green, feet orange red, the webs 

 dusky, length twenty-four and a half inches, weight about three 

 pounds. The female resembles the male, but the colors are less 

 clear, and the bird is much smaller. 



The Black Duck is closely allied to the Mallard, which it entirely 

 replaces in the East and North-east, where the latter is rare or un- 

 known. Of the two, however, the Mallard, by nature of the nutri- 

 tious food afforded him in his Western home, is the more highly es- 

 teemed. The Dusky Duck is rare west of the Mississippi, 

 but has been noticed at one point west of the Rocky Moun- 



