80 



THE GAME BREEDER 



Fig 21 — Coontail. A Compact Form. 



Marksville, La., from October to De- 

 cember consisted of coontail, and as 

 many as 150 seeds were found in a 

 single stomach. Much more than the 

 ordinary proportion of stems and leaves 

 of the plant were taken by these birds. 



Another illustration of foliage eating 

 is furnished by eight mallards and one 

 black duck collected at Big Lake, 

 Arkansas, in December, 1912. More 

 than 85 per cent, of the food of the 

 mallards was made up of the foliage of 

 coontail, with a few seeds, while 90 per 

 cent, of the black duck's food consisted 

 exclusively of coontail foliage. 



Sixty-four mallards collected at Me- 

 nesha. Ark., in November and December, 

 1909, had fed on coontail seeds to the 

 extent of 7.23 per cent, of their diet. 

 Fourteen of the same species of duck, 

 taken at Lake Wapanoca, Arkansas, in 



November, 1910, had eaten enough 

 seeds, with a little foliage of coontail, to 

 form on an average more than half of 

 their food. 



The plant thus has considerable local 

 value as a wild-duck food. However, 

 its tendency to crowd out more desirable 

 species makes transplanting unwise, un- 

 less in particularly difficult cases where 

 other plants have failed. The very 



Fig-. 23— Seeds and Fruit of Coontail. 



Fig. 22 — Coontail, A Diffuse Form. 



qualities of coontail that make it a nui- 

 sance in natural waters commend it to 

 duck farmers. 



The stems of coontail {Ceratophyllum 

 demersum) are thickly clothed with 

 round, dense masses of foliage (Figs. 21 

 and 22), which in shape amply justify 

 the common name so widely used in the 

 South, and which is here adopted for the 

 plant. Coontail is a submerged plant, 

 but only exceptionally is it attached to 



