and I myself saw a friend of mine kill eighty-four by pulling together the triggers of his double-barrelled gun! The Blue-winged Teal is easily kept in captivity, and soon becomes very docile. In this state it feeds freely on coarse corn meal, and I have no doubt that it could readily be domesticated, in which case, so tender and savoury is its flesh that it would quickly put the merits of the widely celebrated Canvass-backed Duck in the shade. In the course of my stay in East Florida, at General HERNANDEZ’s, and Mr BULOW’s, I have observed this Teal in company with the Red-breasted Snipe, the Tell-tale Godwit, and the Yellow-shank Snipe. I observed the same circumstance in Texas. During the time of their residence on the Delaware River, they feed principally on the seeds of the wild oats, which I also found them to do whilst at Green Bay. I have been assured by persons residing on the island of Cuba, that the Blue-winged Teal is abundant, and breeds there. The old males lose the spring plumage of the head almost entirely during a great portion of the autumn and winter, but it is reassumed sometimes as early as the beginning of January. The young of both sexes in their first plumage resemble the females, but the males acquire their full beauty before they are a year old. ANAS DISCORS, _Linn._ Syst. Nat. vol i. p. 205.—_Lath._ Ind. Orn. vol. ii. p. 854. BLUE-WINGED TEAL, ANAS DISCORS, _Wils._ Amer. Ornith. vol. viii. p. 74. pl. 68. fig. 4.—_Nuttall_, Manual, vol. ii. p. 397. ANAS DISCORS, _Ch. Bonap._ Synopsis of Birds of the United States, p. 385. ANAS DISCORS, BLUE-WINGED TEAL, _Richards. and Swains._ Fauna Bor. Amer. vol. ii. p. 444. Adult Male. Plate CCCXIII. Fig. 1. Bill almost as long as the head, deeper than broad at the base, depressed towards the end, its breadth nearly equal in its whole length, being however a little enlarged towards the rounded tip. Upper mandible with the dorsal line at first sloping, then nearly straight, on the unguis decurved, the ridge broad and flat at the base, suddenly narrowed over the nostrils, broader and convex towards the end; the sides erect at the base, afterwards sloping and convex; the narrow membranous margins a little broader towards the end. Nostrils sub-basal, near the ridge, rather small, elliptical, pervious. Lower mandible flattened, straight, with the angle very long and rather narrow, the dorsal line very short, and slightly convex, the sides internally erect, with about a hundred and twenty lamellæ.