DARTER, OR SNAKE-BIRD. 
207 
malous productioiij a monster partaking of tke nature of the 
snake and the duck ; and, in some ancient charts which I have 
seen, it is delineated in all the extravagance of fiction. 
From Mr William Bartram we have received the following 
account of the subject of our history : — 
Here is in this river,*' and in the waters all over Florida, 
a very curious and handsome bird, —the people call them snake- 
birds ; I think I have seen paintings of them on the Chinese 
screens and other Indian pictures ; they seem to be a species 
of Colymhus^ but far more beautiful and delicately formed than 
any other that I have ever seen. They delight to sit in little 
peaceable communities, on the dry limbs of trees, hanging 
over the still waters, with their wings and tails expanded, I 
suppose to cool and air themselves, when at the same time they 
behold their images in the watery mirror. At such times, 
when we approach them, they drop off the limbs into the 
water, as if dead, and for a minute or two are not to be seen ; 
when on a sudden, at a great distance, their long slender head 
and neck appear, like a snake rising erect out of the water ; 
and no other part of them is to be seen when swimming, ex- 
cept sometimes the tip end of their tail. In the heat of the 
day they are seen in great numbers, sailing very high in the 
air over lakes and rivers. 
I doubt not but if this bird had been an inhabitant of the 
Tiber in Ovid’s days, it would have furnished him with a sub- 
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, un- 
less one is constrained by insufferable hunger. They inhabit 
the waters of Cape Fear River, and, southerly. East and West 
Florida.”! 
* The river St Juan, East Florida. 
f Bartram’s Travels, p. 132. — MS. in the possession of the author [Mr 
Ord.] 
