The Mallard 
143 
the following are worthy of note: Wild celery, algae, roots of arrow- 
head (Sagittaria) , fruits, such as grapes, dogwood, sour gum, and bay- 
berries, and the seeds of such small aquatic plants as millweed 
(Myriophyllum ) , horned pondweed ( Zannichellia ) and mermaid-weed 
( Proserpinaca ) . 
Mallards and other wild ducks are of much service to the rice- 
planters of the South, for they feed largely on the 
crayfish that injure dikes and levees, and on the Service to 
'‘volunteer” rice gleaned in the fields after the harvest, ^ ice Planters 
which, if left to grow, produces the red rice so deleterious to the crop. 
The Mallard is of great value to the country as a means of food- 
supply. Its flesh and eggs formed a considerable part of the food of 
Indians, half-breeds, and settlers in the early days, through a large part 
of the Middle West and in all the western Canadian Provinces. Now 
this and other wildfowl are becoming so scarce along the west coast of 
Hudson Bay, where there are no moose, caribou are few, and the fishing 
is poor, that the few people living there, who have always depended 
largely on the birds they could pack away in the fall, find it difficult to 
get food enough to carry them through the winter. 
The principal causes of the diminished numbers of water-fowl are 
market-hunting, spring shooting, and the destruction of the breeding 
grounds for farming. The great prairies of the West and Northwest, 
where the Mallard formerly bred in immense numbers, have been put 
under the plow. Marshes and sloughs have been drained and used as 
pastures. This agricultural occupation and improvement of the land, 
which has broken up the breeding-grounds from Arkansas to Athabaska, 
has been accompanied by unlimited destruction of 
these ducks for food and other purposes. Thus hunt- 
ing, particularly the spring shooting, has driven the 
birds out of the United States and away from settled lands to the far 
North, greatly reducing their breeding area and their opportunities for 
reproduction. 
The Mallard is proverbially fond of grain of all sizes, and it is 
therefore easy to domesticate it and cause it to breed in captivity. 
Herbert K. Job, in Bulletin No. 3 of the National Association of 
Audubon Societies, has given detailed directions from, a wide experience 
for doing this. "No expensive outfit is needed,” he assures the 
reader, "not even buildings.” The usual outfit is cheap wire-fencing 
inclosing a small pond or a section of a b'rook with some adjacent land, 
preferably marshy, and an open shed or thatched shelter for winter. 
Food is simple and easy to provide. Water-fowl when properly handled 
are hardy and seldom have epidemic diseases. 
"Breeding wild ducks usually refers to Mallards,” Job explains, "as 
the majority raised, both in this country and abroad, are of this species, 
which thus stands in a class by itself. Some strains have been bred 
into mere barnyard-fowl, unable to fly. Plenty of stock remains, how- 
Causes ot 
Decrease 
