266 THE WHITE-EYED POCHARD. 
to the Arctic regions, but the point raised isan important one. 
Not only of this species (and certainly not more commonly 
in this than in many others), but of nearly all our ducks, I 
have from time to time shot specimens, mzuus part or the 
whole of one or both feet. The missing portions always seem 
to have been cut clean off. The cicatrised portions are always 
fleshy coloured. I am sure that in the course of my shooting 
I have killed more than fifty birds thus maimed, and some of 
them—like the Marbled Teal—birds that never go near freezing 
or nearly freezing water. Whatcauses these mutilations ? They 
do not occur, I think, in India ; without exception all I have 
thus seen have had the wounds perfectly healed. Steel traps 
are not generally in use in Central or Northern Asia. What 
takes off the feet? Do any kinds of pike or other predaceous 
fish snap them off? Obliged as I am to reject the frost-bite 
and steel-trap theories, I can offer no more plausible solution ; 
but I confess that it by no means satisfies even my own mind, 
and in default of corroborative evidence I cannot expect 
others to accept it. 
When on the wing the flight of this species is fairly, but 
by no means very rapid. They rise with some little difficulty, and 
always by preference against the wind (indeed when there is no 
wind they are slow in getting underweigh.) If flushed from water, 
they strike it repeatedly as they rise with their feet, much after 
the fashion of Coots, but in a less exaggerated style. Rising 
out of the reeds, they fluster up and go off much like Partridges 
with a low, straight flight, often dropping suddenly, almost 
Quail-like, after a short flight. 
On land, one never sees them many paces distant from the 
water's edge, and running down to it, they shuffle along most 
clumsily. | 
In the water they are at home ; they swim with great rapidity 
and dive like the......1 was going to use an inappropriate simile, 
but they dive marvellously. Indeed what becomes of them is 
often a puzzle ; the instant that, wounded, they touch the water, 
they disappear, and not unfrequently that is the last you see 
of them; at most they only rise once or twice, and then dis- 
appear for good. It is a waste of time to pursue them; if they 
do rise, give them instantly a second barrel. If not, you must 
trust to the dogs picking them up in the rushes near the margin 
later in the day when all is quiet. But even the best dogs will 
be baffled, and I have seen a well-trained retriever, after skir- 
mishing in weeds and water for several minutes in pursuit of 
a wounded White-eye, come out with his tail between his legs 
and a general crest-fallen appearance, clearly under the impres- 
sion that, in consequence of some delusion, he had been beguiled 
into hunting a Dabchick—a bird that from his earliest puppy- 
hood he had been taught to consider altogether beneath his. 
notice. 
