102 THE COTTON TEAL. 
Right through the year, summer and winter, this little 
Goose or Cotton Teal abounds in the Calcutta market. In 
number, even in January, it exceeds all the other Ducks put 
together. Twoor three hundred is not at all an uncommon 
number to come in, in one morning. I have known over 500 
to be brought. Where all these birds come from is a perfect 
mystery to me. The limits within which the people assure me 
that all their birds are captured, (very few are shot,) cannot, it 
seems to me, supply the requisite number of a resident species 
like this. In the case of migratory species, it matters less ; 
you may clear off one area this year, but next year a new set 
of migrants will restock it; but in the case of a non-migratory 
species, I cannot understand how persecution like this, (fully 
20,000 must be caught during the year,) does not exterminate it. 
Of this, however, I see no signs. It is more than ten years 
since I first began to watch this market; I notice a manifest 
falling-off in the numbers of the migratory Ducks, none in 
those of the Cotton Teal. 
The Deltas of the Ganges and Brahmaputra appear to be 
its home, and thence it spreads in all directions, on the whole 
growing rarer as we get further and further away, though here 
and there, specially favourable conditions have, even in localities 
far removed from its original habitat, greatly encouraged its 
multiplication. So far as I know, it does not occur at any eleva- 
tion inside the Himalayas; it has not been recorded from any 
of the Kashmir Lakes. Mr. Young does not include it in his 
Kullu list, and I have never seen it in any of the lakes or 
ponds further west up to the borders of Nepal. It is included in 
Hodgson’s “ List of the Birds of Nepal,” but Dr. Scully never 
saw it there, and the notes on Hodgson’s drawings show that 
all his specimens came up from the Terai below, 
Outside our limits we have observed this species in the 
northern portions of the Malay Peninsula, and possibly it may 
occur to the extreme south, though we have not yet met with 
any suitable localities there.* 
It is said to occur in Java and the Philippines, though I am 
not aware that any specimens have been procured in recent 
years in any of these islands, and the fact seems to require 
verification. Pére David tells us that it visits Central China 
in small numbers during the summer, and breeds there. 
Although there is no record of the fact, I have reason to 
believe that it occurs both in Siam and Independent Burma.t 
* Davison, however, writing from Singapore says: ‘‘I saw a couple of Cotton 
Teal yesterday morning in one of the ponds in the Public Gardens here, and Mr. 
Merton, the Superintendent, tells me that they are wild birds that made their way 
suo motu to the Gardens.” 
+ We found it common in Central Tenasserim and the plains country west of the 
Sitang, and Mr. Oates says that it is ‘‘excessively common throughout the year 
all over the province of Pegu,” so that my information, as to its occurrence in Siam 
and Upper Burma, is very likely to be correct, 
