292 
POPULAR HISTORY OF BIRDS. 
are lean^ but set diligently about procuring food and soon 
get fat. In this state^ poor things ! they unknowingly be- 
come attractive morsels^ and are eagerly sought after. They 
are very watchful at night, even keeping sentinels to watch. 
Mr. Peabody hints that the canvas-backed ducks could be 
easily domesticated, as they eat grain very willingly : as it 
is, the red-headed pochard {Nyroca ferina), a bird found 
with us, and which in America eats the Valisneriaj "has 
the honour of being substituted for it, and is often sold in 
the market for a similar price. It is doubtless as good 
too, so that gourmands who must have canvas-backed duck, 
and cannot get it, may occasionally procure in our market 
its representative. We have figured the male Mandarin 
Duck of China (Plate XIX* fig. 2), one of the most hand- 
some of the family. 
The birds constituting the next family are even more at 
home in water than the Anatid^e, They are all of them able 
divers, and can remain for a considerable time beneath 
the surface; from the typical genus being Colymlus, the 
family has derived its name of Colymbid^, or the Divers. 
The divers have a smooth, compressed, pointed bill, with 
linear nostrils; the head is small compared with that of 
the ducks ; and the wings are generally rather short and 
not well adapted for flight, but are used like fins to enable 
