THE MALLARD 
By EDWARD HOWE FORBUSH 
The National Association of Audubon Societies 
Educational Leaflet No. 36 
The Mallard is a cosmopolitan species — the “wild duck’’ of the world 
— well known as the duck from which nearly all varieties of the 
domestic duck were derived. It is the common wild duck over so large 
a part of the earth’s surface that it is of greater economic value than 
any other, and is exceeded by few, if any, in excellence for the table. 
YOUNG MALLARDS AT THE GLOVE VALLEY PRESERVE. NEW YORK 
The Mallard was formerly the most abundant wildfowl on this hemi- 
sphere. ITearne (1795) found it in vast multitudes in parts of the 
Hudson Bay country. Now it is no longer abundant in those regions. 
Before the settlement of the West, the prairie sloughs swarmed with 
Mallards, and in winter the waters of the south were often crowded 
with them. Audubon (1832) found them in Florida in such multi- 
tudes as to “darken the air.” He says that a single negro hunter, a 
slave of General Hernandez, supplied the latter’s plantation in East 
Florida, killing from fifty to one hundred and twenty birds a day in 
