356 
SWIMMERS. 
this species for its frigid natal climes and their icy barriers 
that it is seen to linger in the north as long as the existence of 
any open water can be ascertained. When the critical moment 
of departure at length approaches, common wants and general 
feeling begin so far to prevail as to unite the scattered families 
into numerous flocks. They now proceed towards the South, 
and making a halt on the shores and inland lakes round Hud- 
son Bay, remain until again reluctantly driven towards milder 
climes. 'I'hey are the last birds of passage that take leave 
of the fur countries. Familiar with cold, and only driven to 
migrate for food in the latter end of August, when already a 
thin crust of ice is seen forming in the night over the still sur- 
face of the Arctic Sea, the female Harelda is observed inge- 
niously breaking a way with her wings for the egress of her 
young brood. 
According to the state of the weather we consequently ob- 
serve the variable arrival of these birds. In October they 
generally pay us a visit, the old already clad in the more daz- 
zling garb of winter. The young sometimes seek out the 
shelter of the freshwater ponds, but the old keep otit at sea. 
No place in the Union so abounds with these gabblers as the 
Bay of Chesapeake. They are lively, restless, and gregarious 
in all their movements, and fly, dive, and swim with unrivalled 
dexterity, and subsist chiefly upon small shell-fish and marine 
plants, particularly the Zos/era, or grass-wrack. Late in the 
evening or early in the morning, towards spring more particu- 
larly, vast flocks are seen in the .bays and sheltered inlets, and 
in calm and foggy weather we hear the loud and blended 
nasal call reiterated for hours from the motley multitude. 
There is something in the sound like the honk of the Goose, 
and as far as words can express a subject so uncouth, it 
resembles the guttural syllables ’ogh otigh egh, and then 'ogh 
ogh ogh ough egh, given in a ludicrous drawling tone j but still, 
with all the accompaniments of scene and season, this humble 
harbinger of spring, obeying the feelings of nature and pouring 
forth his final ditty before his departure to the distant North, 
conspires, together with the novelty of his call, to please rather 
