CANVAS-BACK 139 



Lead poisoning from shot has been found among Canvas-backs at Lake Surprise, 

 Texas. Some of these sick birds could dive, but were unable to fly (McAtee, 1908). 



Food Value. The fame of the Canvas-back's flesh has spread not only over this 

 country, but over Europe, whither some were formerly sent in cold storage (Elliot, 

 1898). They gained their reputation chiefly from eating the rich grasses of the Ches- 

 apeake, but those from Virginia and North Carolina are nearly if not quite as good. 

 From both these favored regions they are occasionally driven by a hard freeze and 

 are then forced to eat eel-grass and animal food, becoming "strong" in a few days. 

 Audubon noted that the birds from the vicinity of Charleston and Savannah were 

 inferior to those of the Chesapeake. The Canvas-backs of the Mississippi Delta and 

 Louisiana are as a rule good, but are not generally regarded as equal to those of 

 Chesapeake Bay. California birds are inferior, as the Vallisneria does not grow 

 there, but those from some of the north-central States and the Great Lakes region 

 are very fine. None of the birds from the Pacific Coast seem to be especially good 

 and as before remarked they are accused of eating dead salmon in the State of Wash- 

 ington. Those stragglers killed on our home waters here in New England are not 

 often particularly well flavored. 



If the price paid for this duck is any indication of the merit of its flesh it must 

 stand at the top of the list with only one rival, the little Ruddy Duck. When 

 Canvas-backs were selling in the New York and Boston markets at $6.00 to $8.00 

 per pair, these little birds which weighed only a pound brought $2.50 a pair, and 

 sometimes more. As a rule, Canvas-backs sold for two and one-half to three times 

 as much as Mallards. Toward the close of the market-gunning days the shooters of 

 Currituck were getting as high as $4.00 a pair right on the wharf, but the average 

 price was lower, around $3.00. Even in Audubon's time, in 1837, they were bringing 

 $2.00 a pair in New Orleans, but the price, he says, had recently risen from a very 

 low figure. Alexander Wilson writes that Canvas-backs sold at from $1.00 to $3.00 a 

 pair in his time, the latter figure an enormous price for those days. E. J. Lewis 

 (1855) speaks of Canvas-backs as selling at very low prices at Havre de Grace, es- 

 pecially during good seasons, and there is mention of a lot sold at Egg Harbor, New 

 Jersey, where they had assembled around a wrecked wheat vessel, for twelve and one- 

 half cents each ! But these, of course, were exceptional prices and in the latter case the 

 identity of the birds was not surely known (A. Wilson, 1832). 



At one place which I visited in southern Louisiana I was served a most delicious 

 meal consisting of broiled Canvas-back livers on toast. It seemed to me that I had 

 never tasted anything better. The Canvas-backs of this whole region, and also 

 from Galveston Bay are said to be extremely good. 



To sum up, many discriminating palates have tried to damage the fame of the 

 Canvas-back by lauding other species and possibly they have in part succeeded. 



