“The other is a short squat Duck, almost square in form, the breadth of its body being equal to its length, and uniformly coloured _wood-brown_;—a description of the plumage not perhaps very precise, but so much so with respect to the ordinary hue of the bark of trees, as to make it sufficiently indicative of the prevailing colour. The centre shafts of the tail of this bird terminate in long stiff spines, as stiff and as long as those of a horse-comb. “I shall not venture to say how far similarity of structure in the tail of the Erismaturine family of Ducks with that of the Cormorant, indicates a similarity in the application of this organ for diving purposes, as Mr. Eyton has conjectured; but a bird kept in a small pool in a flower garden, into which pond-weeds were daily thrown, particularly _chara_ and duck-weed, (_pistiaceæ_) upon which it was supposed to feed, would lead me to think that one important purpose that this remarkably constructed organ was applied to, was to move aside the dense vegetation of shallow pools in which it fed. The habit of this bird was to turn round quick. By this motion it opened out the weeds on the surface, so graphically described by Shakspeare as ‘the green mantle of the standing pool,’—and made a clear space for ‘swithering with its neb,’ as Lincolnshire decoy-keepers would say. It dived frequently, and the period it remained submerged was prodigiously long. It swam backward as frequently as forward, and, I apprehend, found its peculiarly made tail a powerful lever in dilating the space behind it. The little garden, in which the bird was kept, that furnished me with these observations, was a fair representation of its natural haunts. Tufts of flowers, composed of lilies, kincalmias, and Indian-shot, with intermixtures of young vegetating bananas, were an apt substitute for the heliconias, nymphæas, cyperaceæ, juncales, and marantaceous plants, among which it delighted when wild and at large. It sometimes crept on the bank, and sheltered itself among the bowery herbage; but the clots of damp weed, strewn around its pond, were its favourite resting place when out of the water; and there it sat _crouching_, not sitting upright as the Grebe does. In its natural haunts it is occasionally flushed, but its flight is exceedingly short, not usually more than from the bank into the mantling herbage of the pond, where it instantly disappears in those long submersions I have already noticed.” * * * * * The remaining _Anatidæ_ which have been observed in Jamaica, I shall dismiss with a bare enumeration, furnished by my esteemed friend to whom this work is so deeply indebted. Though some of them have fallen under my own notice, I have nothing to add to their known history. I treat them in this summary manner, the more willingly, because my friend is himself preparing for the press a treatise on the migratory birds of Jamaica, the fruit of many years’ close observation.