DUCHESNE, LOUIS MARIE OLIVIER (1843- ), French scholar and ecclesiastic, was born at Saint Servan in Brittany on the 13th of September 1843. Two scientific missions—to Mount Athos in 1874 and to Asia Minor in 1876—appeared at first to incline him towards the study of the ancient history of the Christian churches of the East. Afterwards, however, it was the Western church which absorbed almost his whole attention. In 1877 he received the degree of docteur ès lettres with two remarkable theses, a dissertation De Macario magnete, and an Étude sur le Liber pontificalis, in which he explained with unerring critical acumen the origin of that celebrated chronicle, determined the different editions and their interrelation, and stated precisely the value of his evidence. Immediately afterwards he was appointed professor at the Catholic Institute in Paris, and for eight years presented the example and model, then rare in France, of a priest teaching church history according to the rules of scientific criticism. His course, bold even to the point of rashness in the eyes of the traditionalist exegetists, was at length suspended. In November 1885 he was appointed lecturer at the École Pratique des Hautes Études. In 1886 he published volume i. of his learned edition of the Liber pontificalis (completed in 1892 by volume ii.), in which he resumed and completed the results he had attained in his French thesis. In 1888 he was elected member of the Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres, and was afterwards appointed director of the French school of archaeology at Rome. Much light is thrown upon the Christian origins, especially those of France, by his Origines du culte chrétien, étude sur la liturgie latine avant Charlemagne (1889; Eng. trans. by M.L. McClure, Christian Worship: its Origin and Evolution, London, 1902, 2nd ed. 1904); Mémoire sur l’origine des diocèses épiscopaux dans l’ancienne Gaule (1890), the preliminary sketch of a more detailed work, Fastes épiscopaux dans l’ancienne Gaule (vol. i. Les provinces du sud-est, 1894, and vol. ii. L’Aquitaine et les Lyonnaises, 1899); and Catalogues épiscopaux de la province de Tours (1898). When a proposal was set on foot to bring about a reconciliation between the Roman Church and the Christian Churches of the East, the Abbé Duchesne endeavoured to show that the union of those churches was possible under the Roman supremacy, because unity did not necessarily entail uniformity. His Autonomies ecclésiastiques; églises séparées (1897), in which he speaks of the origin of the Anglican Church, but treats especially of the origin of the Greek Churches of the East, was received with scant favour in certain narrow circles of the pontifical court. In 1906 he began to publish, under the title of Histoire ancienne de l’église, a course of lectures which he had already delivered upon the early ages of the Church, and of which a few manuscript copies were circulated. The second volume appeared in 1908. In these lectures Duchesne touches cleverly upon the most delicate problems, and, without any elaborate display of erudition, presents conclusions of which account must be taken. His incisive style, his fearless and often ruthless criticism, and his wide and penetrating erudition, make him a redoubtable adversary in the field of polemic. The Bulletin critique, founded by him, for which he wrote numerous articles, has contributed powerfully to spread the principles of the historical method among the French clergy.
DUCIS, JEAN FRANÇOIS (1733-1816), French dramatist and adapter of Shakespeare, was born at Versailles on the 22nd of August 1733. His father, originally from Savoy, was a linen-draper at Versailles; and all through life he retained the simple tastes and straightforward independence fostered by his bourgeois education. In 1768 he produced his first tragedy, Amélise. The failure of this first attempt was fully compensated by the success of his Hamlet (1769), and Roméo et Juliette (1772). Œdipe chez Admète, imitated partly from Euripides and partly from Sophocles, appeared in 1778, and secured him in the following year the chair in the Academy left vacant by the death of Voltaire. Equally successful was Le Roi Lear in 1783. Macbeth in 1783 did not take so well, and Jean sans peur in 1791 was almost a failure; but Othello in 1792, supported by the acting of Talma, obtained immense applause. Its vivid picturing of desert life secured for Abufas, ou la famille arabe (1795), an original drama, a flattering reception. On the failure of a similar piece, Phédor et Vladimir ou la famille de Sibérie (1801), Ducis ceased to write for the stage; and the rest of his life was spent in quiet retirement at Versailles. He had been named a member of the Council of the Ancients in 1798, but he never discharged the functions of the office; and when Napoleon offered him a post of honour under the empire, he refused. Amiable, religious and bucolic, he had little sympathy with the fierce, sceptical and tragic times in which his lot was cast. “Alas!” he said in the midst of the Revolution, “tragedy is abroad in the streets; if I step outside of my door, I have blood to my very ankles. I have too often seen Atreus in clogs, to venture to bring an Atreus on the stage.” Though actuated by honest admiration of the great English dramatist, Ducis is not Shakespearian. His ignorance of the English language left him at the mercy of the translations of Pierre Letourneur (1736-1788) and of Pierre de la Place (1707-1793); and even this modified Shakespeare had still to undergo a process of purification and correction before he could be presented to the fastidious criticism of French taste. That such was the case was not, however, the fault of Ducis; and he did good service in modifying the judgment of his fellow countrymen. He did not pretend to reproduce, but to excerpt and refashion; and consequently the French play sometimes differs from its English namesake in everything almost but the name. The plot is different, the characters are different, the motif different, and the scenic arrangement different. To Othello, for instance, he wrote two endings. In one of them Othello was enlightened in time and Desdemona escaped her tragic fate. Le Banquet de l’amitié, a poem in four cantos (1771), Au roi de Sardaigne (1775), Discours de réception à l’académie française (1779), Épître à l’amitié (1786), and a Recueil de poésies (1809), complete the list of Ducis’s publications.
An edition of his works in three volumes appeared in 1813; Œuvres posthumes were edited by Campenon in 1826; and Hamlet, Œdipe chez Admète, Macbeth and Abufar are reprinted in vol. ii. of Didot’s Chefs-d’œuvre tragiques. See Onésime Leroy, Étude sur la personne et les écrits de Ducis (1832), based on Ducis’s own memoirs preserved in the library at Versailles; Sainte-Beuve, Causeries du lundi, t. vi., and Nouveaux lundis, t. iv.; Villemain, Tableau de la litt. au XVIIIe siècle.
DUCK. (1) (From the verb “to duck,” to dive, put the head under water, in reference to the bird’s action, cf. Dutch duiker, Ger. Taucher, diving-bird, duiken, tauchen, to dip, dive, Dan. dukand, duck, and Ger. Ente, duck; various familiar and slang usages are based on analogy with the bird’s action), the general English name for a large number of birds forming the greater part of the family Anatidae of modern ornithologists. Technically the term duck is restricted to the female, the male being called drake (cognate with the termination of Ger. Enterich), and in one species mallard (Fr. Malart).
The Anatidae may be at once divided into six more or less well marked subfamilies—(1) the Cygninae or swans, (2) the Anserinae or geese—which are each very distinct, (3) the Anatinae or freshwater-ducks, (4) those commonly called Fuligulinae or sea-ducks, (5) the Erismaturinae or spiny-tailed ducks, and (6) the Merginae or mergansers.
The Anatinae are the typical group, and it is these only that are considered here. We start with the Anas boschas of Linnaeus, the common wild duck, which from every point of view is by far the most important species, as it is the most plentiful, the most widely distributed, and the best known—being indeed the origin of all the British domestic breeds. It inhabits the greater part of the northern hemisphere, reaching in winter so far as the Isthmus of Panama in the New World, and in the Old being abundant at the same season in Egypt and north-western India, while in summer it ranges throughout the Fur-Countries, Greenland, Iceland, Lapland and Siberia. Most of those which fill British markets are no doubt bred in more northern climes, but a considerable proportion of them are yet produced in the British Islands, though not in anything like the numbers that used to be supplied before the draining of the great fen-country and other marshy places. The wild duck pairs very early in the year—the period being somewhat delayed by hard weather, and the ceremonies of courtship, which require some little time. Soon after these are performed, the respective couples separate in search of suitable nesting-places, which are generally found, by those that remain with us, about the middle of March. The spot chosen is sometimes near a river or pond, but often very far removed from water, and it may be under a furze-bush, on a dry heath, at the bottom of a thick hedge-row, or even in any convenient hole in a tree. A little dry grass is generally collected, and on it the eggs, from 9 to 11 in number, are laid. So soon as incubation commences the mother begins to divest herself of the down which grows thickly beneath her breast-feathers, and adds it to the nest-furniture, so that the eggs are deeply imbedded in this heat-retaining substance—a portion of which she is always careful to pull, as a coverlet, over her treasures when she quits them for food. She is seldom absent from the nest, however, but once, or at most twice, a day, and then she dares not leave it until her mate, after several circling flights of observation, has assured her she may do so unobserved. Joining him the pair betake themselves to some quiet spot where she may bathe and otherwise refresh herself. Then they return to the nest, and after cautiously reconnoitring the neighbourhood, she loses no time in reseating herself on her eggs, while he, when she is settled, repairs again to the waters, and passes his day listlessly in the company of his brethren, who have the same duties, hopes and cares. Short and infrequent as are the absences of the duck when incubation begins, they become shorter and more infrequent towards its close, and for the last day or two of the 28 necessary to develop the young it is probable that she will not stir from the nest at all. When all the fertile eggs are hatched her next care is to get the brood safely to the water. This, when the distance is great, necessarily demands great caution, and so cunningly is it done that but few persons have encountered the mother and offspring as they make the dangerous journey.[1] If disturbed the young instantly hide as they best can, while the mother quacks loudly, feigns lameness, and flutters off to divert the attention of the intruder from her brood, who lie motionless at her warning notes. Once arrived at the water they are comparatively free from harm, though other perils present themselves from its inmates in the form of pike and other voracious fishes, which seize the ducklings as they disport in quest of insects on the surface or dive beneath it. Throughout the summer the duck continues her care unremittingly, until the young are full grown and feathered; but it is no part of the mallard’s duty to look after his offspring, and indeed he speedily becomes incapable of helping them, for towards the end of May he begins to undergo his extraordinary additional moult, loses the power of flight, and does not regain his full plumage till autumn. About harvest-time the young are well able to shift for themselves, and then resort to the corn-fields at evening, where they fatten on the scattered grain. Towards the end of September or beginning of October both old and young unite in large flocks and betake themselves to the larger waters. If long-continued frost prevail, most of the ducks resort to the estuaries and tidal rivers, or even leave these islands almost entirely. Soon after Christmas the return-flight commences, and then begins anew the course of life already described.
For the farmyard varieties, descending from Anas boschas, see [Poultry]. The domestication of the duck is very ancient. Several distinct breeds have been established, of which the most esteemed from an economical point of view are those known as the Rouen and Aylesbury; but perhaps the most remarkable deviation from the normal form is the so-called penguin-duck, in which the bird assumes an upright attitude and its wings are much diminished in size. A remarkable breed also is that often named (though quite fancifully) the “Buenos-Ayres” duck, wherein the whole plumage is of a deep black, beautifully glossed or bronzed. But this saturation, so to speak, of colour only lasts in the individual for a few years, and as the birds grow older they become mottled with white, though as long as their reproductive power lasts they “breed true.” The amount of variation in domestic ducks, however, is not comparable to that found among pigeons, no doubt from the absence of the competition which pigeon-fanciers have so long exercised. One of the most curious effects of domestication in the duck, however, is, that whereas the wild mallard is not only strictly monogamous, but, as Waterton believed, a most faithful husband, remaining paired for life, the civilized drake is notoriously polygamous.
Very nearly allied to the common wild duck are a considerable number of species found in various parts of the world in which there is little difference of plumage between the sexes—both being of a dusky hue—such as Anas obscura, the commonest river-duck of America, A. superciliosa of Australia, A. poecilorhyncha of India, A. melleri of Madagascar, A. xanthorhyncha of South Africa, and some others.