“Three things have done it,” the owner of the place said. “These fields, you see, were worthless to me for planting purposes. But ducks have always come here. At a small expense, I arranged to have the fields hold water when once the water had flowed over them. A duck isn’t going to light on dry land, not if there’s water within reach of his wings. The third thing was the matter of feed. I went to Washington, D. C., and spent two or three days at the Department of Agriculture finding out just what wild food would grow here, things that the ducks liked best. They recommended to me duck oats, water lilies, and the American lotus. This last is probably the most successful food I have tried. The bloom has a seed-'holding disk like a sun-flower. The seeds themselves are like hard black acorns, and the ducks are very fond of them.
n. 保护,防卫