"There you see the cravatted swan, a poor native of Canada; he has
come a very long way to show us his brown and gray plumage and his
little black cravat! Look, he is preening himself. That one is the
famous eider duck that provides the down, the eider-down under which
our fine ladies sleep; isn't it pretty? Who would not admire the
little pinkish white breast and the green beak? I have just been a
witness, sir," he went on, "to a marriage that I had long despaired of
bringing about; they have paired rather auspiciously, and I shall
await the results very eagerly. This will be a hundred and
thirty-eighth species, I flatter myself, to which, perhaps, my name
will be given. That is the newly matched pair," he said, pointing out
two of the ducks; "one of them is a laughing goose (_anas albifrons_),
and the other the great whistling duck, Buffon's _anas ruffina_. I have
hesitated a long while between the whistling duck, the duck with white
eyebrows, and the shoveler duck (_anas clypeata_). Stay, that is the
shoveler--that fat, brownish black rascal, with the greenish neck and
that coquettish iridescence on it. But the whistling duck was a
crested one, sir, and you will understand that I deliberated no
longer.
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