About the same time a living and uninjured specimen was given me, taken in a wooded morass. This I kept some days. It would sit anywhere that it was placed, across the finger, or across a stick; never _lengthwise_, though I repeatedly tried it so. Its position in sitting was quite perpendicular, (that is, from head to tail,) the plumage a little puffed out, the head drawn in, the eyes usually shut. When pushed, however, it lengthened the neck to retain its balance, and opened its eyes, which being so large, and the irides of a brilliant yellow, combined with the wide gape to give it a most singular physiognomy. Usually it seemed absolutely blind by day, for when the eyes were wide open, the approach of any object within a line of the pupil, and the moving of it to and fro, produced, in general, not the slightest effect. Once or twice, however, I observed that when the pupil was greatly dilated, as it always was when the lids were first unclosed, the sudden motion of my hand towards the eye, caused the pupil to contract with singular rapidity to less than one fourth of its former dimensions. Afterwards by candle-light, I observed the extraordinary rapidity and extent of this contractility more fully. When the candle was little more than a yard distant, the pupil was dilated to about ³⁄₄ths of an inch diameter, occupying the whole visible area of the eye, the iris being reduced to an imperceptible line; on bringing the candle close to the pupil, it contracted to a diameter of two lines, and that _completely within the period_ required to convey the candle by _the most rapid action of my hand practicable_.