STELLER'S EIDER. 469 



The late Mr. G. N. Curzon informed the Author that on 

 the 15th of August, 1845, he shot a soHtary bh-d of this 

 species sitting on the sea off Filey Brigg, Yorkshire. The 

 skin, which he obligingly sent for the Author's examination, 

 was that of a male, but it exhibited the colour of the plumage 

 of the female over the head and neck ; the autumn moult 

 having commenced, the white feathers about the head, and 

 the black feathers on the chin and on the bottom of the 

 neck, which distinguish the adult male, were just beginning 

 to make their appearance. The bird was preserved for Mr. 

 Curzon, and has ever since been in the possession of his 

 brother, Lord Scarsdale. 



An example of Steller's Eider was obtained, according to 

 Degland and Gerbe, in 1855, between Calais and Boulogne. 

 It has been observed on several occasions at Heligoland ; 

 there are two records of it in Denmark ; and in the Baltic 

 it appears to be not uncommon. To the unfrozen water 

 of the coast of Norway it is an annual visitant, and, round- 

 ing the North Cape, its most western breeding-place is on 

 the Varauger Fjord, just within Norwegian territory. East- 

 ward it breeds on the coast of Russian Finmark, and 

 eggs and down were taken at Petschinka in 1870, but 

 there is no record of its occurrence at Archangel, or on 

 Novaya Zemlya, or along the Arctic coast of Siberia short of 

 the Taimyr Peninsula, where Von Middendorff found the 

 bird abundant and nesting on the ' tundras.' Dr. A. Bunge 

 found it still in flocks in June, at the mouth of the Lena, 

 and had two eggs brought to him on the 4th of July. The 

 ' Vega ' expedition procured specimens in July at Pitlekaj, 

 close to Bering Strait, and its range can be traced down the 

 coast of Kamtschatka — where the species was first obtained 

 by Steller — to the Kuril Islands. Across Bering Sea by 

 way of the Aleutian and Pribilov Islands, we follow it to 

 Alaska ; its head-quarters in that region being at Unalashka, 

 where Mr. Dall, who speaks of it as very abundant, found it 

 nesting on Amaknak Island. There is at present no record 

 of Steller's Eider along the American shores of the Arctic 

 Sea until we reach Cumberland Bay, to the south-west of 



