AN 



cranes. The natural order of the genera is, however, 

 usually understood to be the swans, the geese, the 

 ducks. See CYGNUS and ANSER. 



ANAS. The ducks are the smallest birds of the 

 family, and at the same time the most numerous, and 

 the gayest in their plumage. The general charac- 

 ters are so familiar to every body that it is unneces- 

 sary to describe them ; for, though there are con- 

 siderable differences of shape, size, and colour, there 

 is nobody" who is familiar with ducks of any species, 

 that can easily or even possibly mistake a duck for a 

 swan or goose on the one hand, or for one of the true 

 divers on the other. 



All the ducks can perform the three motions : they 

 can fly, they can swim, and all of them dive upon 

 emergency, and some of them well ; and they can all 

 walk, but some of them are bad walkers, and none of 

 them walk either very elegantly or very fast. All of 

 them perform their long journeys upon the wing, and 

 most of them their shorter ones by swimming along 

 the water. Referring to the article DUCK for the 

 details and the economical uses, we shall devote the 

 remainder of this article to a short notice of the 

 natural gradation or arrangement, as the basis of 

 which we shall take a very clear and luminous paper 

 by Mr. Yarrell, in the 15th volume of the Linnaean 

 Transactions. 



The natural gradation, in the species which visit 

 Britain, (and those which do not are nearly allied to 

 one or another of these,) is from the sheldrake to the 

 golden-eye. The first of these has in the shape and 

 carriage of its body a considerable resemblance to 

 some of the wading birds that frequent the shores 

 to the oyster catcher in particular ; and were it not 

 for the form of the bill, the length of the neck and 

 the webs to the toes, it might be readily mistaken for 

 a shore bird which finds its food in the banks and 

 beaches, and does not swim. Its habits correspond : 

 it does not go out to sea or inland to the lakes, nor 

 does it venture into the mid water of even the nar- 

 row streams which flow into the sea. It lives mostly 

 on the banks, just by the margin of the water, and 

 seldom if ever dabbles so deep as to bring the axis 

 of its body to the horizontal position. The following 

 figure will give an idea of the form of the sheldrakes. 





The Sheldrake. 



The golden-eye is, in many respects, the very re- 

 verse. Its legs are so short, placed so far back, and 

 so wide apart from each other, that it walks with 

 great awkwardness and difficulty. But it rides beau- 

 tifully buoyant upon the water, and swims along 

 with great velocity and apparently very little effort. 

 Its wings and tail are short, and the latter is wedge- 

 shaped or pointed ; but they are close and stiff and 

 not easily ruffled. All its plumage is indeed so com- 

 pact that it can hardly be wetted or turned upon 



A S. 103 



the living bird, even though it moves backwards in 

 the water. Its habit is to be very little upon land, 

 not much on the fresh waters, and seldom, if ever, 

 upon the smaller streams. The following is its 

 figure. 



The Golden Eye. 



The species which are intermediate between these 

 admit of division into at least two sections, though 

 in some respects, these approach each other on the 

 confines ; and there are a few species which might 

 perhaps be classed with either. One of the most 

 obvious distinctions of these two sections is the struc- 

 ture of the feet. At the commencement of the first 

 section it is nearly as much a walking foot as a 

 swimming paddle ; and at the termination of the 

 second it is much more a swimming paddle than a 

 walking foot. But though the' sheldrake swims 

 little and the .golden-eye walks as little, it must not 

 be supposed that the extremes of walking and of 

 swimming feet are to be found with them. These 

 extremes are found with the ostrich and the penguin, 

 the one confined wholly to the land and the other to 

 the sea, and neither of them capable of any motion 

 in the air. The whole genus of ducks are much nearer 

 the penguin and the seal than the ostrich are, as 

 they all have webbed feet and can swim ; and they 

 can also call the wing to their aid when required. 



The feet of the first section of ducks have the 

 tarsi, or foot-bones (improperly called legs) longer 

 and rounder than the others ; they have the front toes 

 less produced in proportion to the size of the birds, 

 and the necks not so compact ; and they have the 

 hind toe free, or without any web connecting it to 

 the rest, although in those species in which the sec- 

 tions approach each other, the hind toe has a slight 

 margin. The legs are placed so far forward that the 

 axis of the body can, when the neck is bent a little 

 backwards at the middle, be carried in nearly a hori- 

 zontal position. The neck too is much larger in 

 proportion to the size of the bird ; their wings are 

 also larger in proportion than those of the second 

 section, reaching generally to the end of the tail. In 

 their internal structure, they have the sternum or 

 breast bone with a much deeper keel of ridge, but 

 not extending so far backward, or ending behind in 

 an ensiform process or projection at the middle. The 

 ribs extend little further backward than the sternum, 

 so that a considerable part of the abdomen is unsup- 

 ported by bone. The enlargement at the bronchial, 

 or inner extremity of the trachea, in all of them, con- 

 sists entirely of a cavity of bone. They have the 

 stomach a true muscular gizzard ; and the in- 

 testinal canal long and furnished with csecal ap- 

 pendages of considerable length. 



Their habits correspond with these peculiarities of 

 structure both external and internal. They frequent 



