252 
PLOTUS ANHXNGA. 
the water being 1 apparently not greater than that 
occasioned by the gliding of an eel. , 
Formerly the darter was considered by voyagers as 
an anomalous production, a monster partaking of the 
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 colymbus, 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, except 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 subject 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, unless one is constrained by 
insufferable hunger. They inhabit the waters of Cape 
Fear River, and, southerly. East and West Florida.” f 
* The river St Juan, East Florida. 
f Bartram’s Travels, p. 132. — MS. in the possession of the 
■author [Mr Ord.] 
