The king duck, the beautiful little western duck, the magnificent surf scoter, and the red-crested duck (a beautiful stuffed specimen of which is in the possession of Mr. Waterton), are all highly ornamental, and well deserve to be kept in pleasure-grounds for their beauty. The _pochard_, or dun bird, is remarkable for the excellence of its flesh, which closely resembles that of the celebrated canvass-back duck of America. Like that duck it feeds greedily on a species of Vallisnèria and on grass-wrack and sea grass (_Rúpia marítima_); which last, Mr. Yarrell tells us, is "called also in America eel-grass, from the form and length of the stem. The ducks dive and pull up these aquatic plants to obtain the tender roots, the only part they seem to eat. The two plants last named are common near the coast in England." I think you will now be pretty well tired of aquatic fowls; and therefore I will only mention one more, viz. the _coot_, respecting which there is a great diversity of opinions. "If a gentleman wishes to have plenty of wild-fowl on his pool," says Col. Hawker, in his _Instructions to Young Sportsmen_, "let him preserve the coots and keep no tame swans. The reason that all wild-fowls seek the company of the coots is, because these birds are such good sentries to give the alarm by day when the fowl generally sleep." "If you wish to have your water-fowl breed," says Captain Mangles, "have no coots, for if you have they will destroy all the eggs." Where there are coots, and it is wished to destroy them, it is extremely difficult to do so by shooting at them, as the moment they see the gun, they dive into the water, and when they come up again, are frequently a hundred yards from the place where they sank. They also make a great commotion in the water by flapping their wings along its surface, and making a tremendous rushing noise, so that it is not very easy to approach them even with a boat.