238 AMERICAN GAME. 
the feeders of Lake Superior, and throughout the western 
country so far south as Texas, and northward to the 
Columbia and the fur countries, the Blue-Winged Teal 
breeds, literally by myriads. Throughout the great 
lakes, it is abundant in the early autumn, becoming 
excessively fat on the seed of the wild ‘rice, with which 
the shallows of all these waters are overgrown, and being 
deservedly esteemed as one of the best, if not the very 
best, of the duck tribe. But it is the first of its race to 
remove from the wild, limpid waters, and wood-embo- 
somed rivers of the great west, to the seaboard tide-waters, 
taking the inland water-courses on their route, rarely 
visiting the actual sea-shores, and proceeding on the 
occurrence of the first frosts, for they are singularly sus- 
ceptible of cold, to the Southern States, where they swarm, 
especially in the inundated rice-fields of Georgia and 
South Carolina, during the winter months. 
The Green-Winged Teal, which is the nearest con- 
gener, and frequently the associate of the Blue-Wing, 
has a far less extensive range, so far as regards its breed- 
ing-grounds, in as much as it never, so far as has been 
satisfactorily shown, has nidificated or produced its 
young south of the great lakes, nor even there in great 
numbers, its favorite haunts for the purposes of repro- 
duction, being the extreme northern swamps and wooded 
morasses, almost up to the verge of the arctic circles. 
It does not come down on its southward migration, at 
nearly so early a period of the autumn as its congener, 
