204 ANAS SPONSA. 



know what became of them. Latham says that they 

 are often kept in European menageries, and will breed 

 there.* 



The wood duck is nineteen inches in length, and two 

 feet four inches in extent; bill, red, margined with 

 black ; a spot of black lies between the nostrils, reaching 

 nearly to the tip, which is also of the same colour, and 

 furnished with a large hooked nail; irides, orange red; 

 front, crown, and pendent crest, rich glossy bronze 

 green, ending in violet, elegantly marked with a line of 

 pure white running from the upper mandible over the 

 eye, and with another band of white proceeding from 

 behind the eye, both mingling their long pendent plumes 

 with the green and violet ones, producing a rich effect; 

 cheeks and sides of the upper neck, violet; chin, throat, 

 and collar round the neck, pure white, curving up in 

 the form of a crescent nearly to the posterior part of 

 the eye; the white collar is bounded below with black; 

 breast, dark violet brown, marked on the fore part with 

 minute triangular spots of white, increasing in size 

 until they spread into the white of the belly; each side 

 of the breast is bounded by a large crescent of white, 

 and that again by a broader one of deep black ; sides 

 under the wings thickly and beautifully marked with 

 fine undulating parallel lines of black on a ground of 

 yellowish drab ; the flanks are ornamented with broad 

 alternate semicircular bands of black and white ; sides 

 of the vent, rich light violet ; tail-coverts, long, of a 

 hair-like texture at the sides, over which they descend, 

 and of a deep black, glossed with green ; back, dusky 

 bronze, reflecting green ; scapulars, Mack ; tail, tapering, 

 dark glossy green above, below dusky; primaries, dusky, 

 silvery hoary without, tipt with violet blue; secondaries 

 greenish blue, tipt with white; win^-co verts, violet 

 blue, tipt with black; vent, dusky; legs and feet, 

 yellowish red ; claws, strong and hooked. 



The above is as accurate a description as I can give 

 of a very perfect specimen now before me. 



* General Synopsis, iii, p. 547. 



