SUMMER DUCK. 
1‘21 
seif met 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 frequently 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 
Potowmac. On the 1 0th of January, I met with two on a 
creek near Petersburgh, 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. In- 
stances have been known where the nest was constructed of a 
few sticks laid in a fork of the branches ; usually, however, 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 olF 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 re- 
sembling 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 
