GOLDEN EYE. 
231 
one, broadly finned ; sides of the bill, obliquely dentated ; 
tongue, covered above with a fine thick velvety down 
of a whitish colour. 
The full plumaged female is seventeen inches in 
length, and twenty-seven inches in extent ; bill, brown, 
orange near the tip ; head and part of the neck, brown, 
or very dark drab, bounded below by a ring of white ; 
below that the neck is ash, tipt with white; rest of the 
lower parts, white ; wings, dusky, six of the secondaries 
and their greater coverts, pure white, except the tips 
of the last, which are touched with dusky spots ; rest 
of the wing-coverts, cinereous, mixed with whitish ; 
back and scapulars, dusky, tipt with brown ; feet, dull 
orange ; across the vent, a band of cinereous ; tongue, 
covered with the same velvety down as the, male. 
The young birds of the first season very much 
resemble the females, but may generally be distinguished 
by the white spot, or at least its rudiments, which marks 
the corner of the mouth. Yet, in some cases, even this 
is variable, both old and young male birds occasionally 
wanting the spot. 
From an examination of many individuals of this 
species of both sexes, I have very little doubt that the 
morillon of English writers ( anas glauciori) is nothing 
more than the young male of the golden-eye. 
The conformation of the trachea, or windpipe, of the 
male of this species, is singular : Nearly about its 
middle it swells out to at least five times its common 
diameter, the concentric hoops or rings, of which this 
part is formed, falling obliquely into one another when 
the windpipe is relaxed ; but when stretched, this part 
swells out to its full size, the rings being then drawn 
apart ; this expansion extends for about three inches ; 
three more below this, it again forms itself into a hard 
cartilaginous shell of an irregular figure, and nearly as 
large as a walnut ; from the bottom of this labyrinth, 
as it has been called, the trachea branches off to the 
two lobes of the lungs ; that branch which goes to the 
left lobe being three times the diameter of the right. 
