File:The birds of America - from drawings made in the United States and their territories (1840) (14565329777).jpg

Identifier: birdsofamericafr06audu (find matches)
Title: The birds of America : from drawings made in the United States and their territories
Year: 1840 (1840s)
Authors: Audubon, John James, 1785-1851 Bowen, John T., ca. 1801-1856?, lithographer
Subjects: Birds Birds
Publisher: New York : Published by J.J. Audubon Philadelphia : J.B. Chevalier
Contributing Library: Smithsonian Libraries
Digitizing Sponsor: Biodiversity Heritage Library

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erywhere in the United States, I have received sufficient proof to thecontrary. If authors had acknowledged that they state so on report, or hadsaid that in the tame state the bird is common, I should not have blamedthem. According to my observation, and I may be allowed to say that Ihave had good opportunities, this valuable species is extremely rare in thewild state in the neighbourhood of Boston in Massachusetts; and in thisassertion, I am supported by my talented and amiable friend Mr. Nuttall,who resided there for many years. Farther eastward, this bird is so rarethat it is scarcely known, and not one was seen by myself or my partybeyond Portland in Maine. On the western coast of Labrador none of theinhabitants that we conversed with had ever seen the Mallard, and in New-foundland the people were equally unacquainted with it, the species beingin those countries replaced by the Black Duck, Jlnas fusca. From NewYork southward, the Mallards become more plentiful, and numbers of them
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THE MALLARD. 237 are seen in the markets of Philadelphia, Baltimore, Richmond in Virginia,and other towns. Although they are very abundant in the Carolinas andFloridas, as well as in Lower Louisiana, they are much more so in theWestern Country. The reason of this is merely that the Mallard, unlike thesea Ducks, is rarely seen on salt water, and that its course from the countrieswhere it chiefly breeds is across the interior of the continent. From ourgreat lakes, they spread along the streams, betake themselves to the ponds,wet meadows, submersed savannahs, and inland swamps, and are even foundin the thick beech woods, in early autumn, and indeed long before the maleshave acquired the dark green colour of the head. Many of them proceedbeyond the limits of the United States. It would be curious to know when this species was first domesticated; but,reader, the solution of such a question is a task on which I shall not venture.In the domestic state every body knows the Mallard. When young

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