in nature. In the wild state it gathers its food, consisting of flag, grasses, small fishes, water insects, etc., from brooks and marshes. When the birds are raised in confinement this diet must, in a measure, be imitated to get the most satisfactory results. Such foods as wheat-bran, cornmeal, and beef-scrap, mixed with water to a mush, with grit and green food, constitute the most satisfactory diet. The food must be in a soft mushy state. Too much hard food, such as grain, does not agree with these birds and they cannot thrive on it. While some raisers use a small allowance of grain, others do not, and it has not been proved to be of any advantage to feed it. It has been estimated that it costs from 6 to 12 cents a pound to raise a duck for market at ten weeks of age. The cost of feed is from 41⁄2 to 5 cents a pound, and that of labor, etc., is from 4 to 8 cents a pound. It costs from $1.75 to $2.50 each to keep breeding ducks a year. When ducks are raised for breeders they are fed differently from those intended for market. They are not forced as much as are the latter, and less fattening food is given them. To raise ducks successfully, it is not at all necessary that they should have access to water, except for drinking purposes; they grow and thrive as readily without. There are successful duck farms where thousands of ducks are raised without access to water, save that which is given them as drink. It has been a matter of much dispute which is the better way. As food, ducks are much prized, their flesh having a very agreeable flavor, when properly fattened. Ducks' eggs are larger than hens' eggs, but resemble them closely in composition. They are much used as food, especially in Europe.

The species most nearly allied to the common duck is said to be the Javanese duck (Anas Javanensis), nearly allied to the mallard.

BIBLIOGRAPHY. Consult: Howard, "Ducks and Geese," in United States Department of Agriculture, Farmer's Bulletin 64 (Washington, 1897); Yorke, Our Ducks (Chicago, 1900), a history of American ducks; Hehn, Cultivated Plants and Domestic Animals (translated by Stallybrass, London, 1891). For wild ducks: Consult the authorities referred to under BIRDS, especially those books relating to northern latitudes. More special works of popular interest are Elliot, Wild Fowl of North America (New York, 1898); Morris, British Game-birds and Wild-Fowl (London, 1891); Lloyd, Game-Birds and Wild-Fowl of Sweden and Norway (London, 1867); Job, Among the Water-Fowl, descriptions and photographic illustrations of breeding habits (New York, 1902).

DUCK (Dutch doek, towel, Icel. dukr, Ger. Tuch, cloth, Goth. gadauka, table-companion). An untwilled fabric of cotton or linen, not so heavy as canvas, but used for similar purposes. (See CANVAS.) The lighter and finer grades are used for women's and children's suits.

DUCK-ANT. The local name in Jamaica for the white ant or termite. See TERMITE.

DUCKBILL, or PLATYPUS. An aquatic, egglaying mammal of the order Monotremata, of which only one species (Ornithorhynchus paradoxus) is known. It inhabits the rivers of Australia, Papua, and Tasmania. The first descriptions of this singular quadruped were received with incredulity, and even when a stuffed speci

DUCKBILL.

men was brought to England, it was suspected. to have been ingeniously fabricated. The whole length, including bill and tail, is usually from 18 to 20 inches. The body is rather long and depressed, the skin loose and thickly covered with glossy hair, among the roots of which there is a layer of soft short waterproof fur like that of a beaver. The head is small and round, with small bright eyes, and no external ears, although the internal ears are perfectly developed, and the hearing acute; and instead of the muzzle, mouth, and teeth of an ordinary quadruped, the creature is furnished with a bill like that of a duck, but broader in proportion. This incloses the long upper and lower jaws within an extremely sensitive naked skin, grayish in color, which is mostly attached to the underlying bones, but possesses

a flexible, lip-like border all round the mouth, and is raised into a frill-like fold round the base of the bill, which, in burrowing and searching for food in the mud, is turned back so as to protect the eyes. The nostrils are situated at the extremity of the upper mandible, so that the animal need only thrust the tip of its nose out of water in order to breathe. The lower mandible has transverse lamellæ, somewhat like the bill of a duck, and each jaw is furnished with two pairs of horny plates ('cornules'), the forward ones like sharp ridges, while those behind are broad and flattened. These serve the purpose of teeth for the adults; but true cheek-teeth are present in young animals (see Proceedings of the Royal Society of

down by friction with food and sand, are shed from the mouth in the same manner as are the milk-teeth of other mammals." The corneous ridges grow up around them and take their place. These facts are regarded as evidence that the duckbill descended from ancestors provided with persistent teeth of the ordinary kind. The tongue is small, non-extensile, partly covered with horny spines, and "has a projection toward its hinder part which serves to direct the food collected into two large cheek-pouches" where it can be stored and conveniently carried to the burrow or some other comfortable eating-place.

The duckbill is aquatic and a burrower, and its skeleton shows adaptation to these habits in the great strength of the bones of the limbs and of the pectoral girdle. The legs are short, the fore feet have each five toes, with strong burrowing claws, and a connecting membrane for swimming, which extends even beyond the claws, but is capable of being folded back, so as not to impede their use in burrowing. The hind feet are smaller than the fore feet; they have each five toes armed with claws, and webbed, but the web does not extend beyond the base of the claws. The tail is strong, broad, and flattened, about half as long as the body, covered with longer and coarser hairs, and nearly naked on its under surface. An interesting feature is the strong horny spurs on the heels of the male, which are movable and traversed by a minute canal opening at the point,

and connected at the base with the duct from a large gland at the back part of the thigh. The popular belief that these spurs were venomous, to which this fang-like structure gave support, has been confirmed by the record of a case by Spicer ("On the effects of wounds on the human subject inflicted by the spurs of the platypus," in Proceedings of the Royal Society of Tasmania, Hobart Town, 1876), of a man who suffered precisely as if locally poisoned, following a wound from the spurs of a captive duckbill. However, as the male alone possesses these appendages, they are probably used mainly in the combats of the nuptial season.

HABITS. The duckbill is as thoroughly aquatic as a beaver, spending its whole life in or near rivers, but not frequenting stagnant pools nor brackish estuaries. It swims chiefly by flipperlike movements of the webbed fore feet, and dives with ease and grace. It is somewhat gregarious, but so shy as rarely to be seen even where numerous, unless quietly watched for at evening, when they "look like so many black bottles floating on the surface, and sink down directly if alarmed." Each pair digs and occupies a burrow in the bank, having usually one opening beneath the water and another above it, which may run irregularly away and upward from the stream for ten or fifteen yards before it suits the owners to enlarge it into a chamber bedded with dry grass, where they sleep, rolled up in a ball, most of the day, and where the young are produced. The evil smell of these burrows is notorious in Australia. These animals rarely go ashore, and when they do so waddle about with a curious slipshod gait; yet those in captivity, where they exhibit docility and intelligence, climb about the furniture of a room with surprising agility. "The food consists of aquatic insects, small crustaceans and worms, which are caught under water, the sand and small stones at the bottom being turned over with the bill. The creatures appear at first to de

posit what they have thus collected in their cheekpouches, and when these are filled they rise to the surface and quietly triturate their meal with the horny plates before swallowing it." This food is discovered in the mud not only by an extreme sensitiveness to touch of the margin of the bill, but by smell, of which those studied in captivity show a remarkably high development. The eyes are small and half hidden, but perfect and useful. The duckbill's voice resembles the growl of a young puppy, but the animal's disposition is gentle.

OVIPAROUS REPRODUCTION. The duckbill, like other monotremes, actually lays eggs from which the young are hatched—a fact long disputed, and doubtfully believed by the aborigines, who were well acquainted with the haunts and habits of the animal, which they sought both as food and for its skin. The eggs are white, three-fourths of an inch long by one-half an inch broad, the shell is soft and flexible, and they contain a large amount of food-yolk, as in birds' eggs. Only a few eggs are laid at a time, often only one, and it is hatched very soon after it is laid. The mother has no nipples, but has milk-glands opening into little pits so that the young seem to be suckled by the ejection of the milk into their mouths, which in this early stage are smooth and fleshy. The young are blind and naked at birth.

BIBLIOGRAPHY. Besides the treatises mentioned above, consult various articles by Owen in the Transactions of the Philosophical and Zoological Societies of London (London, 1832-34); Flower and Lydekker, Mammals, Living and Extinct (London, 1891); Bennett, Transactions of the Zoological Society of London (London, 1835); Bennett, Gatherings of a Naturalist in Australia (London, 1866). See MONOTREME; and compare ECHIDNA.

DUCK-BILLED CAT. See PADDLE-FISH.

DUCK-HAWK. The peregrine. See FALCON. DUCKING-STOOL. A rude device, formerly in use in Great Britain and in parts of the scolds (q.v.). It consisted of a rough, strong United States, for the punishment of common

chair attached to one end of a beam, which worked on a pivot on a post at the edge of a pond or stream of water. The woman was placed bar was placed across her back and in front in the chair with her arms drawn backward; a of her elbows, another bar held her upright, and there were cords to tie her securely in. executors of the punishment then took hold of a chain at the opposite end, and gave her a ducking on the 'see-saw' principle. A ducking-stool was in use for actual ducking at Leominster as late as 1809.

The

DUCKWITZ, duk'vits, ARNOLD (1802-81). A German politician. He was born in Bremen, where, after travels through England and the Netherlands, he became distinguished as the foremost promoter of ship-building and navigation in Germany. He strongly advised the creation of a German customs union, and the harbor improvements of Bremen were also due largely to his initiative. The innovations were followed by the establishment of a steamship line between Bremen and New York, and the conclusion of a favorable postal treaty with the United States. As Imperial Minister of Commerce and Naval Affairs, to which positions he