The group of Ducks usually denominated Teal, Mr. Swainson has formed into the sub-genus _Boschas_, in which he also includes the Mallard, or Wild Duck. "As this is the most numerous group," says this writer, "so it exhibits a greater diversity of form among the species. They are all, however, characterised by a bill longer than the head, whose breadth is equal throughout; sometimes indeed a little dilated, but never contracted at the tip, while the laminæ of the upper mandible are entirely concealed by the margin of the bill." "The beautiful _Anas formosa_, which is essentially a Teal, differs," says a writer in the "Penny Cyclopædia," "in the greater length of the tail, thus connecting it more closely with the Pintail and other long-tailed species; while the bill, which is depressed in form in the Mallard as well as in the Common Duck, is convex, with projecting laminæ, in the Teal. Such is the case with the Blue-winged Teal of North America, in which the laminæ of the upper bill project nearly as much as in the Gadwall, while the upper mandible exhibits that sinuosity at the base which is seen in no other Duck except the Shoveller." Mr. Selby says of the Common Teal: "I am inclined to think that our indigenous breeds seldom quit the immediate neighbourhood of the places in which they are bred, as I have repeatedly observed them to haunt the same district from the time of their being hatched till they separated and paired on the approach of the following spring. The Teal breeds in the long rushy herbage about the edges of lakes, or on the boggy parts of upland moors." Very few of them are found, according to Mr. McGillivray, in the south of Scotland during the summer months. In winter, one of his correspondents informs him, it unites in large flocks, the Drakes having then a whistle like the Plover; but it has not been heard to use this call during the breeding season. The boldness of the female in defence of her young is very affecting. Mr. St. John describes an instance which occurred in Ross-shire. He was riding along when an old Teal, with eight newly-hatched young ones, crossed the road. The youngsters could not climb the bank, and all squatted flat down while he passed. He dismounted, and carried all the young ones a little distance down the road to a ditch, the old bird fluttering about all the time, and frequently coming within reach of his whip. The part of the road where he found them passed through a thick fir-wood covered with rank heather, and it was a great puzzle to him how such little things, scarcely bigger than a mouse, could have struggled through it. Next day he saw them all enjoying themselves in a pond a little distance off, where a brood of Teal appeared every year.