HI. 1 



EIDERS. 



91 



stinking fluid, whose disgusting smell adheres to the collected 

 eggs nnd down. The stinking substance is however so volatile 

 or so easily decomposed in the air that the smell completely 

 disappears in a few hours. The eider, which some years ago was 

 very numerous on Spitzbergen,^ has of late years considerably 

 diminished in numbers, and perhaps will soon be completely 

 driven thence, if some restraint be not laid on the heedless way 

 in which not only the Eider Islands are now plundered, but the 

 birds too killed, often for the mere pleasure of slaughter. On 

 Novaya Zemlya, too, the eider is common. It breeds, for in- 

 stance, in not inconsiderable numbers on the high islands in 

 Karmakul Bay. The eider's flesh has, it is true, but a slight 

 flavour of train oil, but it is coarse and far inferior to that of 

 Briinnich's guillemot. In particular, the flesh of the female 

 while hatchinof is almost uneatable. 



HEADS OF THE 



A. eider; b. king duck; c. barnacle goose; d. white-fronted goose. 



The king-duck occurs more sparingly than the common 

 eider. On Spitzbergen it is called the " Greenland eider," on 

 Greenland the " Spitzbergen eider," which appears to indicate 

 that in neither place is it quite at home. On Novaya Zemlya, on 

 the other hand, it occurs in larger numbers. Only once have I 

 seen the nest of this bird, namely, in 1873 on Axel's Islands in 

 Bell Sound, where it bred in limited numbers together with the 

 common eider. In the years 1858 and 1864, when I visited the 

 same place, it did not breed there. Possibly its proper breeding 



^ The quantity of eider-down wliicli was brought from the Polar lands 

 toTromsoe amounted in 1868 to 540, in 1869 to 963, in 1870 to 882, in 1871 

 to 630. and in 1872 to 306 kilograms. The total annual yield maybe 

 estimated at probably three times as much. 



H 



