This lovely species, the most beautiful of the whole Duck tribe, is peculiar to the continent and isles of America, being familiarly known through almost every portion of the United States, and according to Wilson common in Mexico and the West India islands. In Florida it is very abundant, as it is, more or less, on all the fresh waters so far north as the interior of the State of New York; in the colder regions, to the north-eastward, though not unknown, it is of less frequent occurrence than in more genial climates. Its more correct title, “Summer Duck,” is referable to the fact, that it is not, like most of the _Anatides_ and _Fuligulæ,_ fresh water and sea ducks, more or less a bird of passage, retiring to the fastnesses of the extreme north, for the purposes of nidification and rearing its young; but, wherever it abounds, is a permanent citizen of the land, raising its family in the very place where itself was born, and not generally, if undisturbed, moving very far from its native haunts. I think, however, that in the United States it is perhaps better known under its other appellation of Wood Duck; and I am not prepared to say, although the former is the specific name adopted by all naturalists, that the latter is not the better, as the more distinctive title, and applying to a more remarkable peculiarity of the bird. For it, alone, so far as I know, of the Duck family, is in the habit of perching and roosting on the upper branches of tall trees, near water-courses, and of making its nest in the holes and hollows of old trunks overhanging sequestered streams or woodland pools, often at a great height above the surface of the water. The Summer Duck is the most gayly attired of the whole family; it has, moreover, a form of very unusual elegance, as compared with other ducks; and a facility of flight, and command of itself on the wing, most unlike to the ponderous, angular flapping of the rest of its tribe, wheeling with a rapidity and power of pinion, approaching in some degree to that of the swallow, in and out among the branches of the gnarled and tortuous pin-oaks, whose shelter it especially affects. From two very fine specimens, male and female, now before me, I take the following description. Drake, in full summer plumage. Length from tip of bill to tip of tail, 21 inches. Length of wing, 9 inches. Bill, 1-1/5 inch. Tarsus, 1½. Middle toe, 2 inches. Body long, delicately shaped, rounded. Head small, finely crested; neck rather long and slender. Eye large, with golden-yellow irides. Legs and feet orange-yellow, webs dusky, claws black. Plumage soft, compressed, blended. Bill orange-red at the base, yellow on the sides, with a black spot above the nostrils, extending nearly to the tip; nail recurved, black.