66 COMMON COOT. 



ther or no different from ours cannot be ascertained. How much 

 is it to be regretted, that in an expedition of discovery, planned 

 and fitted out by an enlightened government, furnished with every 

 means for safety, subsistence and research, that not one naturalist, 

 not one draftsman should have been sent, to observe and perpetu- 

 ate the infinite variety of natural productions, many of which are 

 entirely unknown to the community of science, which that exten- 

 sive tour must have revealed ! 



The Coot leaves us in November, for the southward. 



The foregoing was prepared for the press, when the editor, 

 in one of his shooting excursions on the Delaware, had the good 

 fortune to kill a full plumaged female Coot. This was on the 

 twentieth of April. It was swimming at the edge of a cripple or 

 thicket of alder bushes, busily engaged in picking something from 

 the surface of the water, and while thus employed it turned fre- 

 quently. It differed in no respect from the female above mention- 

 ed. The membrane on its forehead was very small, and edged 

 on the fore part with gamboge. Its eggs were of the size of part- 

 ridge shot. And on the thirteenth of May another fine female 

 specimen was presented to him which agreed with those describ- 

 ed, with the exception of the membrane on the forehead being 

 nearly as large and prominent as that of the male. From the cir- 

 cumstance of the eggs of all these birds being very small, it is pro- 

 bable that the Coots do not breed until July. 



