THE BRANT. 63 
wings, short and concave ; its legs placed far behind, and its 
feet uncommonly large; it consequently is an expert diver. 
Tt flies with the swiftness and in the manner of the buffel- 
head ; and it swims precisely as Latham reports the Ural duck 
to swim, with the tail immersed in the water as far as the 
rump; but whether it swims thus low with the view of em- 
ploying its tail as a rudder, as Latham asserts of the Ural, or 
merely to conceal itself from observation, as the scaup duck 
is wont to do when wounded, and as all the divers do when 
pursued, I cannot determine. 
“This is a solitary bird, and with us we never see more 
than five or six together, and then always apart from other 
ducks. It is uncommonly tame ; so much so, that, by means 
of my skiff, I have never experienced any difficulty in ap- 
proaching within a few yards of it. Its flesh I do not con- 
sider superior to that of the buffel-head, which, with us, is a 
duck not highly esteemed. 
“T should not be surprised if Buffon’s Sarcelle a queue 
épineuse de Cayenne should turn out to be this species. The 
characters of the two certainly approximate ; but as I have 
not been enabled to settle the question of their identity in my 
own mind, I shall, for the present, let the affair rest.” 
THE BRANT. (Anas bernicla.) 
PLATE LXXII.—Fic. 1. 
Le Cravant, Briss. vi. p. 304, 16, pl. 31.—Buff. ig. p. 87.—Bew. ii. p. 277.—Lath. 
Syn. iii. p. 467.—Arct. Zool. No. 478.—Peale’s Museum, No. 2704. 
BERNICLA BRENT A.—STEPHENS.* 
Bernicla brenta, Steph. Cont. Sh. Zool.-xii. p. 46.—Oie Cravant, Temm. Man. ii. 
p. 824.— Anser brenta, lem. Br. Anim. p. 127.—Anser bernicla, North. Zool. 
ii. p. 469.—Brent, or Boord Goose, Mont. Orn. Dict. and Supp.—Bew. Br. 
Birds, ii. p. 311.—Brent Bernicle, Selby, Illust. Br. Orn. pl. 65. 
Tue brant, or, as it is usually written, brent, is a bird well 
known on both continents, and celebrated in former times 
* Stephens first applied this title, as a generic one, to a considerable 
number of birds, and gives, as their characters, ‘“ distinguished from the 
