3826 AMERICAN GAME. 
however, very remarkable, that I cannot discover that 
the Canvas-Back is ever seen or known to visit the great 
Upper Lakes, where the Read-Head is also rare, though 
Widgeon and Scaup abound, and though the northern 
tributaries of Lake Huron, as well as the flats of the 
Lake St. Clair are overgrown with all the various plants 
in which they most delight, both the Valisneria Ameri- 
cana, and the zizania panicula effusa, known as wild 
rice, flourishing in wonderful profusion, and imparting 
their peculiar qualities of flavor, tenderness, and juci- 
ness to all the tribes of water-fowl, even the least worthy, 
which haunt these deep, ice-cold, translucent waters. 
The only solution I can offer for this seeming anomely, 
for all the other ducks pause to recruit awhile in those 
favorable feeding-grounds while on their southward 
course, is that the Canvas-Back and Red-Head do not 
- move en masse from the northern sea-shores, until those 
great inland waters are girdled around their margins, 
and winter-bound along their tributary streams by fetters 
of thick-ribbed ice, and that the fowl in consequence 
pass over without pausing or becoming known, to their 
great detriment, to the red or white inhabitants of the 
coast. Certain it is, that they are unknown to the 
Indian tribes who dwell on the shores or islands of Lake 
Huron, and that the officers of the English posts who 
have known them elsewhere, ignore them here. 
To compensate, however, for our ignorance concerning 
their summer habits, haunts, and proceedings, we are 
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