Anas obscura rubripes. 
L ^^ulc 
_ , Apr. 
Indeed it would be possible to contend that these aberrant or 
intermediate specimens are really hybrids, for in the series before 
me they do not exceed in number the birds (no less than nine) 
which show unmistakable traces of an infusion of Mallard blood. 
Since two species so obviously distinct as are the Mallard and 
Black Duck are connected by intergrades known to be hybrids, 
why should we not assume that the scarcely more numerous inter¬ 
grades between the red-legged and brown-legged Black Ducks are 
also hybrids ? Not that I am disposed to seriously press this argu¬ 
ment for, however plausible it may seem, my present impression is 
that the forms of the Black Duck here considered are only sub- 
specifically distinct. 
There can be no reasonable doubt that the smaller of the two 
is the original Anas obscura. This name has remained unchanged 
in form and uncoupled with any synonym ever since it was insti¬ 
tuted, more than one hundred years ago, by Gmelin (Syst. Nat. I, 
part ii, 1788, 541), who based it on the “Dusky Duck” of Pen¬ 
nant. This is described (Arct. Zook, II, 564) as coming from the 
province of New York” and having “ a long and narrow dusky 
bill tinged with blue: chin white: neck pale brown, streaked 
downwards with dusky lines.” Pennant adds that the legs in one 
of his birds were “ dusky, in another yellow ” ; but as the specimens 
which he examined were evidently dried skins (in the Blasius 
Museum) this statement, as well as that relating to the color of the 
bill, loses much of its apparent importance. 
At Lake Umbagog, where the Black Duck breeds rather plenti¬ 
fully, I have not cared to incur the odium of breaking the game 
laws’and the reproaches of my own conscience by killing birds 
which were sitting on their eggs or in charge of broods of tender 
young, but I have shot a few specimens in late August and very 
many during the month of September. Among these I have found 
only one example of rubripes , a nearly typical female taken on 
September 28, 1889. With this single exception I have never met 
with the red-legged form at this locality before October 8. Soon 
after that date it becomes common, remaining until the waters of 
the lake are closed by ice. 
In Massachusetts, also, the locally bred birds or early migrants 
from the north, which we kill during September and the first half 
