202 BRITISH: SEABIRDS: 
The eggs are from five to seven, or rarely even 
eight, pale olive-green or greenish-gray in colour, 
and smooth and wax-like in texture. In many 
places the Eider is jealously protected for the sake 
of its precious down, especially in Iceland and 
Norway, and the taking of the eggs or down by 
unauthorized persons is an offence punishable by 
law. Outside our limits, the Eider inhabits most of 
the coasts and islands of the North Atlantic. The 
much rarer King Eider, Somateria spectabstlis—an 
occasional visitor to the British Seas—claims a 
passing reference, for it is by no means improbable 
that the species actually breeds within our limits. 
COMMON SCOTER. 
Of all the hordes of Ducks that pour southwards 
in autumn, down the western coasts of Europe, 
and find a winter resort in the British Seas, the 
present species, the Anas nigra of Linnzeus, the 
Fuligula nigra of many writers, and Edemia nigra 
of others who regard the Scoters as generically 
distinct from the Pochard and allied forms, is cer- 
tainly by far the commonest. It is known on almost 
all parts of the coast as the “Black Duck.” Few 
other Ducks are so absolutely marine as the Scoter ; 
no weather is bad enough to drive it ashore, and it 
seldom visits the land at all, except for purposes 
of reproduction. It is a gregarious bird, and so 
large are some of its gatherings off the British 
coasts, that it literally blackens the sea with its 
