736 POCHARD 



Among other species nearly allied to the Pochard that frequent 

 the northern hemisphere may be mentioned the ScAUP-Duck, N. 

 marila, with its American representative N. affinis, in both of which 

 the male has the head black, glossed with blue or green ; but these 

 are nearly always uneatable from the nature of their food, which is 

 mostly gathered at low tide on the "scaups" or "scalps"^ — as 

 the banks on which mussels and other marine mollusks grow are in 

 many places termed. Then there are the Tufted Duck, N. cristaia 

 — black with a crest and white flanks — and its American equivalent 

 N. coUaris, and the White-eyed or Castaneous Duck, N. castanea or 

 F. nyroca, and the Red-crested Duck, N. nifina — both peculiar to the 

 Old World, and the last, conspicuous for its red bill and legs, well 

 known in India. In the southern hemisphere the genus is repre- 

 sented by three species, TV", capensis, N. australis and N'. novx-zealandix, 

 whose respective names indicate the country each inhabits, and in 

 South America exists a somewhat divergent form which has been 

 placed in a distinct genus as Metopiana peposaca. 



Leaving the ScOTERS for further consideration, a few words 

 may be here added to what has been already said of the small 

 group known as the Eiders, which, though generally classed with 

 the " Fuligulinm" differ from them in several respects : the bulb at 

 the base of the trachea in the male, so largely developed in the 

 members of the genus Nyroca, and of conformation so similar in 

 all of them, is here much smaller and wholly of bone ; the males 

 take a much longer time, two or even three years, to attain their 

 full plumage, and some of the feathers on the head, when that 

 plumage is completed, are always stiff, glistening and of a peculiar 

 pale -green colour. This little group of hardly more than half a 

 dozen species may be fairly considered to form a separate genus 

 under the name of Somateria. Many authors indeed have — un- 

 justifiably, as it seems to the present writer — broken it up into 

 three or four genera. The well-known Eider, S. mollissima, is the 

 largest of this group, and, beautiful as it is, is excelled in beauty 

 by the King-Duck, ^S*. spedahilis, and the little ^S*. stelleri. Space 

 fails here to treat of the rest, but the sad fate which has overtaken 

 one of them, ^S*. labradoria, has been before mentioned (Extermina- 

 tion, pp. 221-22.3) ;2 and only the briefest notice can be taken of 



^ Cognate with scallop, and the Dutch schclp, a shell. 



^ The statements made at this reference have been criticized by Mr. Dutcher 

 {Auk, 1894, pp. 4-12). In the main they are confirmed by what he says, 

 though he adduces evidence, which it is not for me to dispute, as to examples 

 of the species, subsequently adding {to7n. cit. p. 176) one more, having been 

 obtained since 1852, the latest year that, had been known to me as a certainty 

 for its existence. Whether it survived (as is now, to use the American idiom, 

 " claimed ") until 1875 signifies little. That it is extinct I think no one will 

 justifiably deny, though no one would be better pleased than myself to learn that 



