49 
SURF DUCK. 
JIJVJIS PERSPICILLJITJI. 
[Plate LXVII. — Fig. 1, Male.'] 
Gmel. Syst. I, p. 524, No. 25. — La grande Macreuse de la Baye de Hudson^ Briss. VI, p. 
425, 30. — La Macreuse a large bec^ Buff. IX, p. 244. PI. Enl. 995. — Edw. pi. 155. 
Lath. Syn. Ill, p. 479. — Ind. Orn. p. 847, No. 42. — Phil. Trans. LXII, p. 417. — Blade 
Buck, Arct. Zool. No. 483. — Canard Marchand, Temm. Man. d'Orn. p. 853. — Peale’s 
Museum, No. 2788 ; female, 2789. 
THIS Duck is peculiar to America, and altogether confined 
to the shores and bays of the sea, particularly where the waves 
roll over the sandy beach. Their food consists principally of 
those small bivalve shell-fish already described, spout-fish, and 
others that lie in the sand near its surface. For these they dive 
almost constantly ; and the facility and skill with which they either 
glide through the rolling billows, or mount over them, excite asto- 
nishment. They seldom or never visit the salt marshes. They 
continue on our shores during the winter ; and leave us early in 
May for their breeding places in the north. Their skins arc re- 
markably strong ; and their flesh coarse, tasting of fish. I'hey are 
shy birds, not easily approached; and are common in winter along 
the whole coast, from the river St, Lawrence to Florida. 
The length of this species is twenty inches, extent thirty-two 
inches ; the bill is yellowish red, elevated at the base, and marked 
on the side of the upper mandible with a large square patch of 
black, preceded by another space of a pearl color ; the part of the 
bill thus marked swells or projects considerably from the common 
surface ; the nostrils are large and pervious ; the sides of the bill 
broadly serrated or toothed ; both mandibles are furnished with a 
nail at the extremity, that of the lou’er mandible precisely resem- 
N 
VOL. VIII. 
