SUMMER DUCK. 21 
with it in October. It rarely visits the sea-shore or salt marshes, 
its favourite haunts being the solitary, deep, and muddy creeks, 
ponds, and mill-dams of the interior, making its nest fre- 
quently in old hollow trees that overhang the water. 
The summer duck is equally well known in Mexico and 
many of the West India islands. During the whole of our 
winters, they are occasionally seen in the states South of the 
Potomac. On the 10th of January, I met with two on a 
creek near Petersburg, in Virginia. In the more northern 
districts, however, they are migratory. In Pennsylvania, the 
female usually begins to lay late in April or early in May- 
Instances have been known where the nest was constructed 
of a few sticks laid in a fork of the branches; usually, how- 
ever, the inside of a hollow tree is selected for this purpose. 
On the 18th of May I visited a tree containing the nest of a 
summer duck on the banks of Tuckahoe river, New Jersey, 
It was an old grotesque white oak, whose top had been torn 
off by a storm. It stood on the declivity of the bank, about 
twenty yards from the water. In this hollow and broken top, 
and about six feet down, on the soft decayed wood, lay thirteen 
eggs, snugly covered with down, doubtless taken from the 
breast of the bird. These eggs were of an exact oval shape, 
less than those of a hen, the surface exceedingly fine grained, 
and of the highest polish, and slightly yellowish, greatly resem- 
bling old polished ivory. The egg measured two inches and 
an eighth by one inch and a half. On breaking one of them, 
the young bird was found to be nearly hatched, but dead, as 
neither of the parents had been observed about the tree during 
the three or four days preceding, and were conjectured to have 
been shot. 
This tree had been occupied, probably by the same pair, 
for four successive years, in breeding-time. ‘The person who 
gave me the information, and whose house was within twenty 
or thirty yards of the tree, said that he had seen the female, 
the spring preceding, carry down thirteen young, one by one, 
in less than ten minutes. She caught them in her bill by the 
