202 
ANAS SPONSA. 
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 
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 10th of January I met 
with two on a creek near Petersburgli 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, 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 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 
