  The occurrence of the Bloom-Gilman duality in the nucleon structure function
is investigated by analyzing the Q**2-behavior of low-order moments, both
including and excluding the contribution arising from the nucleon elastic peak.
The Natchmann definition of the moments has been adopted in order to cancel out
target-mass effects. It is shown that the onset of the Bloom-Gilman duality
occurs around Q**2 ~ 2 (GeV/c)**2 if only the inelastic part of the nucleon
structure function is considered, whereas the inclusion of the nucleon elastic
peak contribution leads to remarkable violations of the Bloom-Gilman duality.
