82 AMERICAN GAME. 
tail covert the same color. Flanks brown, barred with 
dusky ; lower part of the hind neck and fore part of the 
back undulated with brownish and light brownish red, 
hind part undulated with grayish white; primaries 
brown; outer webs of the inner secondaries black, mar- 
gined with white—inner webs grayish brown; secondary 
coverts white, tipped with black; speculum brilliant 
green, formed by the middle secondaries. Length 
twenty-one inches, wing ten and a half. Female smaller, 
plumage duller, without the green markings.” 
The Widgeon breeds in the extreme north, beyond the 
reach of the foot of civilized man, in the boundless mosses 
and morasses, prodigal of food and shelter, of Labrador, 
and Boothia. Felix, and the fur countries, where it spends 
the brief but ardent summer in the cares of nidification, 
and the reproduction of its species. 
During the spring and autumn, it is widely distributed 
throughout the Union, from the fresh lakes of the north- 
west to the shores of the ocean, but it is most abundant, 
as well as most delicious where the wild rice, Zizania 
pannicula effusa, the wild celery, Balisneria Americana, 
and the eel-grass, Zostera Marina, grow most luxuriously. 
On these it fares luxuriously, and becomes exceedingly 
fat, and most delicate and succulent eating, being almost 
entirely a vegetable feeder, and as such, devoid of any 
fishy or sedgy flavor. 
In the spring and autumn it is not unfrequently shot 
in considerable numbers, from skiffs, on the mud banks 
