264 
ANATIDiE. 
ill after it is almost useless, as it will dive under his very jaws, 
and sooner or later it entirely disappears. I have had many 
opportunities of observing this habit, but never a better one 
than on a fine breezy October morning in 1864, up to which 
time I had often been in sore perplexity at the disappearance of 
Golden-eye or Tufted Duck beneath the surface, never to show 
itself again. At an early hour I noticed a couple of Golden- 
eyes in the small loch near the house, swimming rapidly and 
diving, and afterwards marked down one of them at the small 
mill-dam not far from the kirk. My brother-in-law went after 
it with the gun, and before long I received a pencilled scrap 
saying that he had winged it, but had no more ammunition. 
On my going to him, he told me that he had dropped the bird 
as it rose, that it dived, reappeared for a moment, dived again, 
and had been seen no more. Having reloaded, he watched on 
one side of the pool, and I on the other, setting Pirate to guard 
the mouths of the deep burns which supply the water. Half 
an hour passed, and still there was not so much as a feather to 
be seen. Eesolved not to lose so favourable an opportunity for 
getting a clue to the fate of many a lost Duck, we raised the 
sluice and proceeded to drain the pool, one of us steadily 
watching the water as it flowed through, while the other wan- 
dered round the banks, keeping a good look-out on every side. 
The bird could not have escaped, neither could it have died 
without floating up, and that it had not risen since its second 
dive we both felt perfectly convinced; therefore, in our eagerness 
to unravel the mystery, we did not grudge the loss of the next 
two hours, when, the pool having become shallow and greatly 
reduced in size, we sent the dog in. Soon afterwards I observed 
a slight bubbling near the sluice, and guessing its cause, in- 
stantly ran down the stream towards the sea ; but the Duck 
must have passed me while I was climbing the wall which 
crossed my path, for we soon afterwards discovered it flapping 
about in a shallow part of the stream a long way farther down. 
One wing was so much injured by the shot as to prevent flight, 
and although we naturally felt soriy for the poor bird, it was a 
