which arises from the putrefaction of the oil contained in every feather; no exposure will draw this off, how long soever it be continued: they must be lain. upon, which is the only remedy; and, for this reason, old feathers are much more valuable than new.

CHAPTER XII.

OF THE DUCK, AND ITS VARIETIES.

THE tame Duck is the most easily reared of all our domestic animals. The very instincts of the young ones direct them to their favourite element; and though they are conducted by a hen, yet they despise the admonitions of their leader.

This serves as an incontestible proof, that all birds have their manners rather from nature than education. A falcon pursues the partridge, not because it is taught by the old one, but because its appetites make their importunate call for animal food; the cuckoo follows a very different trade from that which its nurse endeavoured to teach it, and if we may credit Pliny, in time destroys its instructor: animals of the duck kind also follow their appetites, not their tutor, and come to all their various perfections without any guide. All the arts possessed by man, are the result of accumulated experience; all the arts of inferior animals are self-taught, and scarce one acquired by imitation.

It is usual with the good women to lay duck-eggs under a hen, because she hatches them better than the original parent would have done. The duck seems to be a heedless, inattentive mother; she frequently leaves her eggs till they spoil, and even seems to forget that she is intrusted with the charge: she is

equally regardless of them when excluded; she leads them to the pond, and thinks she has sufficiently provided for her offspring when she has shown them the water. Whatever advantages may be procured by coming near the house, or attending in the yard, she declines them all; and often lets the vermin, who haunt the waters, destroy them, rather than bring them to take shelter nearer home. The hen is a nurse of a very opposite character; she broods with the utmost assiduity, and generally brings forth a young one from every egg committed to her charge: she does not lead her younglings to the water indeed, but she watchfully guards them, when there, by standing at the brink. Should the rat or the weasel attempt to seize them, the hen can give them protection; she leads them to the house when tired with paddling, and rears up the supposititious brood, without ever suspecting that they belong to another.

The wild duck differs in many respects from the tame; and in them there is still greater variety than among the domestic kinds. Of the tame duck there are not less than ten different sorts; and of the wild, Brisson reckons above twenty. The most obvious distinction between wild and tame ducks is in the colour of their feet; those of the tame duck being yellow, those of the wild duck black. The difference between wild ducks among each other, arises as well from their size as the nature of the place they feed in. Sea ducks, which feed in the salt waters, and dive much, have a broad bill, bending upwards, a large hind toe, and a long blunt tail. Pond ducks, which feed in plashes, have a straight and narrow bill, a small hind toe, and a sharp pointed train. The former are called, by our decoy-men, foreign ducks; the latter are supposed to be natives of England. It would be tedious to enter into the minute varieties of such a number of birds, all agreeing in the same

general figure, the same habits and mode of living, and differing in little more than their size and the colours of their plumage. In this tribe we may rank, as natives of our own European dominions, the Eider Duck, which is double the size of a common duck, with a black bill; the Velvet Duck, not so large, and with a yellow bill; the Scoter, with a knob at the base of a yellow bill; the Tufted Duck, adorned with a thick crest; the Scaup Duck, less than the common duck, with the bill of a grayish-blue colour; the Golden Eye, with a large white spot at the corners of the mouth, resembling an eye; the Sheldrake, with the bill of a bright red, and swelling into a knob; the Mallard, which is the stock from whence our tame breed has probably been produced; the Pintail, with the two middle feathers of the tail three inches longer than the rest; the Pochard, with the head and neck of a bright bay; the Widgeon, with a lead-coloured bill, and the plumage of the back marked with narrow black and white undulated lines, but best known by its whistling sound; lastly, the Teal, which is the smallest of this kind, with the bill black, the head and upper part of the neck of a bright bay. These are the most common birds of the duck kind among ourselves; but who can describe the amazing variety of this tribe, if he extends his view to the different quarters of the world? The most noted of the foreign tribe are, the Muscovy Duck, or, more pro"perly speaking, the Musk Duck, so called from a supposed musky smell, with naked skin round the eyes, and which is a native of Africa. The Brasilian Duck, that is of the size of a goose, all over black, except the tips of the wings. The American Wood Duck, with a variety of beautiful colours, and a plume of feathers that falls from the back of the head like a friar's cowl. These, and twenty others, might be added, were increasing the number of names the way to enlarge the sphere of our comprehension.