Mergansers 



boiled through two or three waters; that they should then be 

 well baked, stewed, fricassed, or broiled, and flavored with 

 rashers of bacon and onions, potatoes, etc. This means, then, 

 that the bird should be so treated as to rob it of all its original 

 quality, and to reduce it to a condition simply of meat. A 

 hawk, an owl, a cayote, a catfish, a German carp, or even a 

 dogfish may be made edible by such treatment. If a bird or 

 a fish is not fit to eat without all this manipulation and seasoning, 

 it is not an edible animal in the first place. Then why kill it ? " 



Like the wood duck, golden-eye, bufflehead, and its imme- 

 diate kin, the hooded merganser goes into a hollow tree or stump 

 to build a nest of grasses, leaves, and moss, lined with down from 

 the mother's breast, and lays from eight to ten buffy white eggs. 

 Now is the time that the handsome male disports himself at 

 leisure, and at a distance, while the patient little mother keeps 

 the eggs warm, feeds the yellowish nestlings, carries them to the 

 lake one by one in her bill, as a cat carries its kittens ; teaches 

 them to swim, dive, and gather their own food, and to fly by 

 midsummer; defends them with her life, if need be; and wel- 

 comes home the lazy, cavalier father when the drudgeries are 

 ended and the young are fully able to join the migrating flocks 

 that begin to gather in the Hudson Bay region in September. It 

 is she who ought to wear the white halo around her head instead 

 of the drake. 



Sportsmen often find small companies of hooded mergan- 

 zers in the same lake with mallard, black, wood, and other ducks 

 that, like them, delight in woody, well-watered interior districts. 

 Mr. Frank Chapman found them in small ponds in the hum- 

 mocks of Florida ; and the author first made their acquaintance on 

 a poultry stand in the French market in New Orleans. 



92 



