224 
ANAS VALISINERIA. 
if they can, they must be had, whatever may he the 
price. 
The canvass-back will feed readily on grain, especially 
wheat, and may be decoyed to particular places by baiting 
them with that grain for several successive days. Some 
few years since a vessel loaded with wheat was wrecked 
near the entrance of Great Egg Harbour, in the autumn, 
and went to 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 
unknowm to the people of that quarter. 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 w r ere generally abandoned, as being 
too diflic ult to be come up with. They continued about 
for three weeks, and during the greater part of that 
time a continual cannonading w r as heard from every 
quarter. The gunners called them sea ducks. They 
w r ere all canvass-backs, at that time on their w r ay from 
the north, wdien 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 Phila- 
delphia market at the time, from an Egg Harbour 
gunner, and never met with their superior either in 
w r eight or excellence of flesh. When it was known 
among those people the loss they had sustained in 
selling for twenty-five cents w r hat w r ould have brought 
them from a dollar 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 brow r n ; 
rest of the head and greater part of the neck, bright 
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