The bill is of a yellowish-green color, not very flat, about an inch broad, and two and a half long from the corners of the mouth to the tip of the nail; the head and upper half of the neck are of a deep, glossy, changeable green, terminated in the middle of the neck by a white collar, with which it is nearly encircled; the lower parts of the neck, breast and shoulders are of a deep, vinous chestnut; the covering scapular feathers are of a kind of silvery-white, those underneath rufous, and both are prettily crossed with small, waved threads of brown. Wing coverts ash, quills brown, and between these intervenes the _speculum_, or beauty spot, common in the duck tribe, which crosses the wing in a transverse, oblique direction. It is of a rich, glossy purple, with violet or green reflections, and bordered by a double streak of sooty black and pure white. The belly is of a pale gray, delicately crossed and penciled with numberless narrow, waved, dusky lines, which on the sides and long feathers that cover the thighs are more strongly and distinctly marked. The upper and under tail coverts, lower part of the back and rump, are black, the latter glossed with green; the four middle tail feathers are also black, with purple reflections, and, like those of the domestic duck, are stiffly curled upward. The rest are sharp-pointed, and fade off to the exterior edges from brown to dull white. Iris of the eye bright yellow, feet, legs and webs reddish-orange, claws black. The female, and young male until after the first moult, is very different in plumage from the adult drake, partaking none of his beauties, with the exception of the spot on the wings. All the other parts are plain brown, marked with black, the centre of every feather being dark and fading to the edges. She makes her nest, lays her eggs—from ten to sixteen in number, of a greenish white—generally in the most sequestered mosses or bogs, far from the haunts of man, and hidden from his sight among reeds and rushes. To her young, helpless, unfledged family, and they are nearly three months before they can fly, she is a fond, attentive and watchful parent, carrying or leading them from one pool to another, as her fears or inclinations direct her, and she is known to use the same wily stratagems, in order to mislead the sportsman and his dog, as those resorted to by the ruffed grouse, the quail and the woodcock, feigning lameness, and fluttering, as if helplessly wounded, along the surface of the water, until she has lured the enemy afar from her skulking and terrified progeny. The Mallard is rarely or never shot to decoys, or _stools_ as they are termed, since these are but little used except on the coast, where this duck is, as I have previously observed, of rare occurrence, although it is occasionally found in company with the Dusky Duck, _anas obscura_, better known to gunners as the Black Duck.