13*2 
CANVASS-BACK DUCK. 
pieces. The wheat floated out in vast quantities, and the 
whole surface of the bay was in a few days covered with ducks 
of a kind altogether unknown to the people of that quar- 
ter. The gunners of the neighbourhood collected in boats, in 
every direction, shooting them ; and so successful were they, 
that, as Mr Beasley informs me, two hundred and forty were 
killed in one day, and sold among the neighbours, at twelve 
and a half cents a-piece, without the feathers. The wounded 
ones were generally abandoned, as being too difficult to be come 
up with. They continued about for three weeks, and during 
the greater part of that time a continual cannonading was 
heard from every quarter. The gunners called them sea ducks. 
They were all canvass-backs, at that time on their way from 
the north, when this floating feast attracted their attention, and 
for a while arrested them in their course. A pair of these very 
ducks I myself bought in Philadelphia market at the time, from 
an Egg Harbour gunner, and never met with their superior, 
either in weight or excellence of flesh. When it was known 
among those people the loss they had sustained in selling for 
twenty-five cents what would have brought them from a dol- 
lar to a dollar and a half per pair, universal surprise and regret 
were naturally enough excited. 
The canvass-back is two feet long, and three feet in extent, 
and, when in good order, weighs three pounds ; the bill is large, 
rising high in the head, three inches in length, and one inch 
and three-eighths thick at the base, of a glossy black; eye, 
very small ; irides, dark red ; cheeks and fore part of the head, 
blackish brown ; rest of the head and greater part of the neck, 
bright glossy reddish chestnut, ending in a broad space of black 
that covers the upper part of the breast, and spreads round to 
the back ; back, scapulars, and tertials, white, faintly marked 
with an infinite number of transverse waving lines or points, 
as if done with a pencil ; whole lower parts of the breast, also 
the belly, white, slightly pencilled in the same manner, scarcely 
perceptible on the breast, pretty thick towards the vent ; wing- 
coverts, grey, with numerous specks of blackish ; primaries and 
