it does not waddle as most Ducks do, but steps out like a Goose; it is an excellent swimmer, and upon an emergency dives with facility. Its flight is strong and enduring, and its voice loud, but by no means unpleasing. Its food consists principally of vegetable materials; Jerdon, indeed, says he has been told that it will sometimes eat carrion, but adds that he has never seen it so employed, though he has often observed it feeding in fields of corn. Until the approach of the breeding season the Brahminy Ducks live very peaceably in company with other swimming birds, but about that time they become very pugnacious and quarrelsome. Towards the end of April or the beginning of May the different pairs retire to their appropriate nesting-places, which are generally in holes in the ground. In North-west Africa, Calvin found one of their nests in the cleft of a perpendicular rock, which had likewise been the nesting-place of Robins, Kites, and Vultures. In Siberia they not unfrequently build in the holes of Siberian marmots, and occasionally in hollow trees. The nest, which is composed of dry grass and lined with down, usually contains from four to six roundish thin-shelled eggs, of a glossy white or yellowish white. As soon as the young brood are sufficiently dry after their escape from the shell they leap from the nest and make their way to the nearest pond, where, under the careful superintendence of their parents, they pass the earlier part of their lives. At first they are clad in a suit of down, which is brownish grey upon the upper part of the body with the exception of a whitish spot upon the breast; the lower surface is of a dirty white. Pallas states that in Mongolia these birds are regarded as sacred. * * * * * The SHELDRAKES (_Vulpanser_) differ from the above birds in the formation of their beak, the comparative shortness of their wings and legs, and in the coloration of their plumage. In this group the upper mandible is broadest towards its extremity, and in the male exhibits an excrescence at its base, which swells considerably during the breeding season, and afterwards almost entirely disappears. THE COMMON SHELDRAKE.