CINEREOUS COOT. 19 



called the Black Duck.* This is douhtless a species of Coot, but 

 whether or not different from ours cannot be ascertained. How much 

 is it to be regretted, that in an expedition of discovery, planned and 

 fitted out by an enlightened government, furnished with every means for 

 safety, subsistence and research, not one naturalist, not one draftsman, 

 should have been sent, to observe and perpetuate the infinite variety of 

 natural productions, many of which are entirely unknown to the com- 

 munity of science, which that extensive tour must have revealed ! 



The Coot leaves us in November, for the southward. 



The foregoing was prepared for the press, when the author, in one of 

 his shooting excursions on the Delaware, had the good fortune to kill a 

 full plumaged female Coot. This was on the twentieth of April. It 

 was swimming at the edge of a cripple or thicket of alder bushes, busily 

 engaged in picking something from the surface of the water, and while 

 thus employed it turned frequently. The membrane on its forehead 

 was very small, and edged on the fore part with gamboge. Its eggs 

 were of the size of partridge shot. And on the thirteenth of May, 

 another fine female specimen was presented to him, which agreed .with 

 the above, with the exception of the membrane on the forehead being 

 nearly as large and prominent as that of the male. From the circum- 

 stance of the eggs of all these birds being very small, it is probable 

 that the Coots do not breed until July. 



. * History of the Expedition, vol. ii., p. 194. Under date of November 30th, 

 1805, they say : " The hunters brought in a few black ducks of a species common 

 in the United States, living in large flocks, and feeding on grass ; they are distin- 

 guished by a sharp white beak, toes separated, and by having no craw." 



