20 SOMMER DUCK. 
SUMMER DUCK, OR WOOD DUCK. (Anas sponsa.) 
PLATE LXX.—Fie. 3. 
Le Canard VEté, Briss. vi. p. 351, 11, pl. 32, fig. 2.—Le Beau Canard Huppé, 
Buff. ix. p. 245.—Pl. enl. 980, 981.—Summer Duck, Catesby, i. pl. 97.—Edw. 
pl. 101.—Arect. Zool. No. 943.—Lath. Syn. iii. p. 546.—Peale’s Museum, 
No. 2872. 
DENDRONESSA SPONSA.—RICHARDSON, SWAINSON.* 
Anas sponsa, Bonap. Synop. p. 385.—Dendronessa sponsa, Worth. Zool. ii. 446. 
Tx1s most beautiful of all our ducks has probably no superior 
among its whole tribe for richness and variety of colours. It 
is called the wood duck from the circumstance of its breeding 
in hollow trees, and the summer duck from remaining with us 
chiefly during the summer. It is familiarly known in every 
quarter of the United States from Florida to Lake Ontario, 
in the neighbourhood of which latter place I have myself met 
* These lovely ducks may be said to represent an incessorial form 
among the Anatide ; they build and perch on trees, and spend as much 
time on land as upon the water. Dr Richardson has given this group, 
containing few members, the title of Dendronessa from their arboreal 
habits. Our present species is the only one belonging to America, 
where it ranges rather to the south than north ; the others, I believe, 
are all confined to India. They are remarkable for the beauty and 
splendour of their plumage, its glossy, silky, texture, and for the singular 
form of the scapulars, which, instead of an extreme development in 
length, receive it in the contrary proportion of breadth ; and instead 
of lying flat, in some stand perpendicular to the back. They are all 
adorned with an ample crest, pendulous, and running down the back of 
the neck. They are easily domesticated, but I do not know that they 
have been yet of much utility in this state, being more kept on account 
of their beauty, and few have been introduced except to our menageries, 
With a little trouble at first, they might form a much more common 
ornament about our artificial pieces of water. It is the only form of a 
tree duck common to this continent ; in other countries there are, how- 
ever, two or three others of very great importance in the natural system, 
whose structure and habits have yet been almost entirely overlooked or 
lost sight of. These seem to range principally over India, and more 
sparingly in Africa ; and the summer duck is the solitary instance, the 
United States the nearly extreme limit, of its own peculiarities in this 
division of the world.—Ep. 


