106 FEMALE DARTER. 
ject for some beautiful and entertaining metamorphoses, I 
believe they feed entirely on fish, for their flesh smells and 
tastes intolerably strong of it: it is scarcely to be eaten, unless 
one is constrained by insufferable hunger. They inhabit the 
waters of Cape Fear river, and, southerly, Hast and West 
Florida.” * 
FEMALE DARTER, OR SNAKE-BIRD.+ 
PLATE LXXIV.—Fic. 2. 
Anhinga de Cayenne, Pl. enl. 959.—Peale’s Museum, No. 3189, female. 
PLOTUS ANHINGA.—LINNEUvS. 
Tae female darter measures three feet five inches in length, 
and differs in having the neck before of a roan colour, or iron 
erey ; the breast the same, but lighter, and tinged with pale 
chestnut ; the belly as in the male ; where the iron grey joins 
the black on the belly there is a narrow band of chestnut ; 
upper head and back of the neck, dark sooty brown, streaked 
with blackish ; cheeks and chin, pale yellow ochre; in every 
other respect the same as the male, except in having only a 
few slight tufts of hair along the side of the neck ; the tail is 
twelve inches long to its insertion, generally spread out like 
a fan, and crimped like the other on the outer vanes of the 
middle feathers only. 
The above is a description of the supposed female darter 
which is preserved in Peale’s Museum. 
The author having written to Mr John Abbott of Georgia 
relative to this species, and some others, received from this 
distinguished naturalist a valuable communication, from which 
the following extract is made :—“ Both the darters I esteem 
as but one species. I have now by me a drawing of the male 
or black-bellied only, but have had specimens of both at the 
same time. I remember that the upper parts of the female 
were similar to those of the male, except that the colour and 
* Bartram’s Travels, p. 132.—MS,. in the possession of the author 
[Mr Ord]. 
; This article was written by Mr Ord. 
q 


