In the vast northern solitudes of the great lakes of the northwest, in all the streams of Upper Canada, even to the feeders of Lake Superior, and throughout the western country so far south as Texas, and northward to the Columbia and the fur countries, the Blue-Winged Teal breeds, literally by myriads. Throughout the great lakes, it is abundant in the early autumn, becoming excessively fat on the seed of the wild rice, with which the shallows of all those waters are overgrown, and being deservedly esteemed as one of the best, if not the very best, of the duck tribe. But it is the first of its race to remove from the wild, limpid waters, and wood-embosomed rivers of the great west, to the seaboard tide-waters, taking the inland water-courses on their route, rarely visiting the actual sea-shores, and proceeding on the occurrence of the first frosts, for they are singularly susceptible of cold, to the Southern States, where they swarm, especially in the inundated rice-fields of Georgia and South Carolina, during the winter months. The Green-Winged Teal, which is the nearest congener, and frequently the associate of the Blue-Wing, has a far less extensive range, so far as regards its breeding-grounds, in as much as it never, so far as has been satisfactorily shown, has nidificated or produced its young south of the Great Lakes, nor even there in great numbers, its favorite haunts, for the purposes of reproduction, being the extreme northern swamps and wooded morasses almost up to the verge of the arctic circles. It does not come down on its southward migration, at nearly so early a period of the autumn as its congener, being less susceptible of cold, and tarrying on the Great Lakes till the frosts set in with sufficient severity to prevent its frequenting its favorite haunts with pleasure, or obtaining its food with facility. It is rarely or never seen in the Middle States during the summer, but is tolerably abundant during the autumn on all the marshy lakes and pools, and along the shores of all the reedy rivers from the great lakes downward to the sea-board, though, like the last named species, it is purely a fresh-water duck, never frequenting the sea-shores or salt bays, finding no food thereon with which to gratify its delicate and fastidious palate, which, eschewing fish, the larvæ of insects, and the lesser _crustaceæ_, relishes only the seeds of the various water plants and grasses, the tender leaves of some vegetables, and more especially the grain of the wild rice, _Zizania panicula effusa_, which is its favorite article of subsistence, and one to which may be ascribed the excellence of every bird of air or water which feeds on it, from the Rice-Bird and the Rail, to the Teal, the Canvas-Back, and even the large Thick-Billed _Fuligula_, closely allied to the Scoter, the Velvet Duck, and other uneatable sea-fowl of Lake Huron, which are scarcely, if at all, inferior to the Red Heads of Chesapeake Bay, the Gunpowder, or the Potomac.