736 POCHARD 
Among other species nearly allied to the Pochard that frequent 
the northern hemisphere may be mentioned the ScAaup-Duck, UN. 
marila, with its American representative JV. 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, J. cristata 
—black with a crest and white flanks—and its American equivalent 
N. collaris, and the White-eyed or Castaneous Duck, NV. castanea or 
F. nyroca, and the Red-crested Duck, WV. rujina—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, WV. capensis, N. australis and N. nove-zealandiz, 
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 Scorers for further consideration, a few words 
may be here added to what has been already said of the small 
group known as the ErpERS, which, though generally classed with 
the “ Fuligulinz,” 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. spectabilis, and the little S. stellert. 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. 221-223) ;? and only the briefest notice can be taken of 
1 Cognate with scallop, and the Dutch schelp, a shell. 
2 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 (tom. 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 
