MUSK DUCK. 227 



covers are also rufous : the speculum or mirror on the 

 wings is greeU;, glossed with purple. 



The female is rather smaller ; and has merely a small 

 whitish spot at the base of the bill, in lieu of the fleshy 

 protuberance possessed by the male : the band on the 

 breast is not so broad ; and the black one on the belly 

 is very straight, and is often variegated with irregular 

 whitish spots. The trachea of the male differs from 

 that of any European duck : it is furnished with a 

 labyrinth composed of two roundish bladders of a most 

 delicate texture, one of which is larger than the other; 

 both are uneven on the surface, and of so tender a fabric 

 as scarcely to bear the pressure of the finger without 

 fracture. 



The Musk Duck. 



Tadorna moschata, Sw. 

 Black, irregularly varied with white : bill with the base 

 and tip blue, and the middle red : skin round the eye 

 naked, red, and tuberculated. 



Anas moschata, Linnceus, Auct. Anas sylvestris Braziliensis, 

 Ray, Synop. 148. 1. Le Canard musque, Buffon, PL Enl. 

 989. Le gran Canard, Azara, Voy. ed. Sonnini, iv. No. 

 427. p. 327. Muscovy Duck, Lath. Synop. vi. 476. Gen. 

 Hist. X. 268. 



This singular species has long been a domesticated 

 tenant of our farm and poultry yards ; although of late 

 years it is by no means so commonly seen as formerly. 

 It was well known to AV^illughby and Ray, — the fathers 

 of systematic ornithology, at least in this country, — as 

 a native of South America; but, by a singular fatality, 

 nearly all the writers who succeeded, got an idea that 

 it came originally from Russia ; and hence the vulgar 

 and erroneous name of Muscovy duck. Such mistakes 

 among the writers of the last century were naturally to 

 be expected ; but when we find, in the latest of our 

 compiled systems, that this tropical American bird " is 

 said to be in a wild state about the Lake Baikal in 

 Q 2 



