THE AMERICAN DARTER. 163 
Family—PL OTIDZ:. 
THE AMERICAN DARTER. 
Plotus anhinga, MARCGRAVE. 
OME forty-six years ago (in 1851) a male specimen of the American Darter 
was captured in the month of June, near Poole, in the county of Dorsetshire. 
In general colour the Darter is black, flushed with green, with a narrow line 
of white hair-like feathers along each side of the neck; the wing-coverts, and the 
elongated scapulars conspicuously marked with white. ‘The female is similar, but 
less bright, and has the head, neck, and breast buff, with a narrow chestnut band 
below. A most interesting point in the anatomy of the bird’s neck has been 
described by the late Mr. W. A. Forbes—a very talented ornithologist, whose 
accomplished work, when he died at the age of only twenty-eight, gave the 
brightest promise for a brilliant future. Some of the vertebre of the neck are so 
placed, in relation to the others, as to form a “kink,” while the neck muscles are 
so disposed as to give the bird the power to dart forward its head, with great 
ease and swiftness, after the fishes which form its prey. 
The Darter is to be sought for—though it is another thing to catch it,-—along 
the wooded banks of rivers, and by tree-studded swamps and marshes, or in just 
such haunts as are frequented by Herons. It is a night feeder, and during the day 
it sits on a stone or stump, either sleepily resting in the sun, or standing 
erect with expanded wings. 
It gets its name of Snake-bird from its habit of swimming with its body 
quite under water, and its head and neck, alone above the surface, jerking back- 
wards and forwards rhythmically, with the swift progress of its body, till it comes 
near enough to its prey, when the head and neck suddenly disappear, (darted out 
by the curious mechanism above described), to reappear in a few moments with a 
fish transfixed on its spear-like beak. Its diving and subaqueous swimming powers 
are probably unexcelled by any other water-bird. 
The Darter builds, either alone or in companies, in trees, on a branch a few 
feet above the water, a nest of sticks and grass or moss, in which it lays three 
or four eggs. ‘These appear to be white, from an external chalky layer overlying a 
greenish-blue shell. The young are hatched helpless, and covered with down. 
