300 EARLY SPRING IN MASSACHUSETTS. 
diver, etc., as well as goosander.My 
bird is twenty-five and seven eighths inches 
long and thirty-five in alar extent. From point 
of wing to end of primaries, eleven inches. It 
is a great diver, and does not mind the cold. 
It appears admirably adapted for diving and 
swimming. Its body is flat, and its tail short, 
flat, compact and wedge-shaped. Its eyes peer 
out from a slight slit or semicircle in the skin 
of the head, and its legs are flat and thin in 
one direction, and the toes shut up compactly 
so as to create the least friction when drawing 
them forward, but their broad webs spread three 
inches and a half when they take a stroke. 
The web is extended three eighths of an inch 
beyond the inner toe of each foot. There are 
very conspicuous black teeth, like serrations, 
along the edges of its bill, and this also is 
roughened so that it may hold its prey securely. 
The breast appeared quite dry when I raised it 
from the water. The head and neck are, as 
Wilson says, black, glossed with green, but the 
lower part of the neck pure white, and these 
colors bound on each other so abruptly that one 
appears to be sewed on to the other. It is a 
perfect wedge from the middle of its body to 
the end of its tail, is only three and one fourth 
inches deep from back to breast at the thickest 
part, while the greatest breadth horizontally 
