hich furnish a considerable part of their food when snow covers the
ground.

The wild rice-marshes along the Fox River and around Pucaway Lake were
the summer homes of millions of ducks, and in the Indian summer, when
the rice was ripe, they grew very fat. The magnificent mallards in
particular afforded our Yankee neighbors royal feasts almost without
price, for often as many as a half-dozen were killed at a shot, but we
seldom were allowed a single hour for hunting and so got very few. The
autumn duck season was a glad time for the Indians also, for they
feasted and grew fat not only on the ducks but on the wild rice, large
quantities of which they gathered as they glided through the midst of
the generous crop in canoes, bending down handfuls over the sides, and
beating out the grain with small paddles.

The warmth of the deep spring fountains of the creek in our meadow
kept it open all the year, and a few pairs of wood ducks, the most
beautiful, we thought, of all the ducks, wintered in it. I well
remember the first specimen I ever saw. Father shot it in the creek
during a snowstorm, brought it into the house, and called us around
him, saying: "Come, bairns, and admire the work of God displayed in
this bonnie bird. Naebody but God could paint feathers like these.
Juist look at the colors, hoo they shine, and hoo fine they overlap
and blend thegether like the colors o' the rainbow." And we all agreed
that never, never before had we seen so awfu' bonnie a bird. A pair
nested every year in the hollow top of an oak stump about fifteen feet
high that stood on the side of the meadow, and we used to wonder how
they got the fluffy young ones down from the nest and across the
meadow to the lake when they were only helpless, featherless midgets;
whether the mother carried them to the water on her back or in her
mouth. I never saw the thing done or found anybody who had until this
summer, when Mr. Holabird, a keen observer, told me that he once saw
the mother carry them from the nest tree in her mouth, quickly coming
and going to a nearby stream, and in a few minutes get them all
together and proudly sail away.

Sometimes a flock of swans were seen passing over at a great height on
their long journeys, and we admired their clear bugle notes, but they
seldom visited any of the lakes in our neighborhood, so seldom that
when they did it was talked of for years. One was shot by a blacksmith
on a millpond with a long-range Sharp's