204 
ANAS SPONSA. 
know what became of them. Latham says that they 
are often kept in European menageries, and will breed 
there. * 
The wood duck is nineteen inches in length, and two 
feet four inches in extent ; bill, red, margined with 
black ; a spot of black lies between the nostrils, reaching 
nearly to the tip, which is also of the same colour, and 
furnished with a large hooked nail ; irides, orange red; 
front, crown, and pendent crest, rich glossy bronze 
green, ending in violet, elegantly marked with a line of 
pure white running from the upper mandible over the 
eye, and with another band of white proceeding from 
behind the eye, both mingling their long pendent plumes 
with the green and violet ones, producing a rich effect ; 
cheeks and sides of the upper neck, violet ; chin, throat, 
and collar round the neck, pure white, curving up in 
the form of a crescent nearly to the posterior part of 
the eye ; the white collar is bounded below with black ; 
breast, dark violet brown, marked on the fore part with 
minute triangular spots of white, increasing in size 
until they spread into the white of the belly; each side 
of the breast is bounded by a large crescent of white, 
and that again by a broader one of deep black ; sides 
under the wings thickly and beautifully marked with 
fine undulating parallel lines of black on a ground of 
yellowish drab ; the flanks are ornamented with broad 
alternate semicircular bands of black and white ; sides 
of the vent, rich light violet ; tail-coverts, long, of a 
bair-like texture at the sMes, over which they descend, 
and of a deep black, glossed with green ; back, dusky 
bronze, reflecting green ; scapulars, black ; tail, tapering, 
dark glossy green above, below dusky ; primaries, dusky, 
silvery hoary without, tipt with violet blue; secondaries 
f reenish blue, tipt with white ; wing-coverts, violet 
lue, tipt with black; vent, dusky; legs and feet, 
yellowish red ; claws, strong and hooked. 
The above is as accurate a description as I can give 
of a very perfect specimen now before me. 
General Synopsis , iii, p. 547. 
