In all the individuals which I have examined, I have found the stomach to contain fish of different kinds, several species of shell-fish, and quantities of gravel and sand, some of the fragments being of large size. Their flesh is tough, rank, and fishy, so as to be scarcely fit for food. In the young males, in the month of September, the whole upper plumage is mottled with darkish-brown and greyish-white, the latter colour margining most of the feathers. The neck has a considerable extent of dull greyish-white, spread over two or three inches, and approaching toward the cheeks and throat. This colour disappears about the beginning of January, when they become of a more uniform dark tint, the upper part of the head brownish-black, without any white spot; there is a patch of brownish-white at the base of the upper mandible on each side; another of an oblong form over the ear, and on the nape are elongated greyish-white marks; the bill and feet dusky green, the iris brown. ANAS PERSPICILLATA, _Linn._ Syst. Nat. vol. i. p. 201.—_Lath._ Ind. Ornith. vol. ii. p. 847. BLACK or SURF DUCK, _Wils._ Amer. Ornith. vol. viii. p. 49, pl. 67, fig. 2. FULIGULA PERSPICILLATA, _Ch. Bonaparte_, Synopsis of Birds of the United States, p. 389. OIDEMIA PERSPICILLATA, _Richards. and Swains._ Faun. Bor. Amer. vol. ii. p. 449. BLACK or SURF DUCK, _Nuttall_, Manual, vol. ii. p. 416. Adult Male. Plate CCCXVII. Fig. 1. Bill about the length of the head, very broad, as deep as broad at the base, depressed towards the end, which is rounded. Upper mandible with the dorsal outline convex and descending, before the nostrils concave, on the unguis convex and declinate; the ridge broad and convex at the base; the sides at the base erect, bulging, and very broad, towards the end convex, the edges soft, with about 30 internal lamellæ, for two-thirds from the base they are nearly parallel and straight, but towards the end ascending, the unguis very large, somewhat triangular and rounded. Lower mandible flattened, with the angle long and rather narrow, the dorsal line slightly convex, the edges with about 35 lamellæ. Nostrils submedial, elliptical, large, pervious, near the ridge.