250 
PLOTUS ANHINGA. 
young* ; here and there, on the upper part of the neck, 
one perceives a feather of the same ; on the forehead 
there is a small knob or protuberance ; the neck, near 
its centre, takes a singular bend, in order to enable the 
bird to dart forward its bill with velocity when it takes 
its prey ; leg’s and feet of a yellowish clay colour, the 
toes, and the hind part of the legs, with a dash of 
dusky; claws greatly falcated; when the wings are 
closed they extend to the centre of the tail. 
Length, from the tip of the bill to the end of the tail, 
two feet ten inches,* breadth three feet ten inches; 
bill to the angle of the mouth full four inches ; tail, ten 
inches and a half, composed of twelve broad and stiff 
feathers ; weight three pounds and a half. 
The serratures of the bill are extremely sharp, so 
much so that when one applies tow, or such like 
substance, to the bird’s mouth, it is with difficulty 
disengaged. 
The lower mandible and throat, as in the divers, are 
capable of great expansion to facilitate the swallowing 
of fish, which constitute the food of this species. The 
position of these birds, when standing, is like that of 
the gannets. 
The above description was taken from a fine adult 
male specimen, which was shot by my fellow-traveller, 
Mr T. Peale, on the 1st of March, 1818, in a creek below 
the Cow Ford, situated on the river St John, in East 
Florida. We saw some others in the vicinity, but, 
owing to their extreme vigilance and shyness, we could 
not procure them. 
From the description of the white-bellied darter of 
Latham and others, which is unquestionably this species, 
one would be inclined to conjecture, that the bird figured 
as the female is the young male. But this point it is 
* The admeasurement of the specimen described in the first 
edition of the ninth volume, was made by Wilson himself from the 
stuffed bird in Peale’s museum. It differs considerably from that 
described above ; but as our specimen was a very fine one, there is 
room to conjecture that there was some error in the admeasurement 
of the former, ours being described immediately after death. 
