154 CONSERVATION OF CANADIAN WILD LIFE 
A most admirable account of the serious reduction in 
the abundance of the eider, its protection and use in Nor- 
way and Iceland, and an appeal for its conservation on our 
Atlantic coast, is contained in Doctor Charles W. Town- 
send’s paper, ‘‘A Plea for the Conservation of the Eider,”’ 
published in The Auk, vol. XXI, pp. 14-21, 1914, and in 
the Seventh Annual Report of the Commission of Conserva- 
tion, p. 250, 1916, to which the reader interested in this 
subject is referred. Under the Migratory Birds Conven- 
tion the eider is protected for a period of ten years. It 
is fervently hoped that Newfoundland will co-operate in 
protecting this bird, and that an eider-down industry may 
be developed on the coasts of Canada, Newfoundland, and 
Labrador. 
Scoters.—There are three species of scoters, which are 
black sea-ducks, native to Canada. As they are fish-eaters, 
their flesh is not generally esteemed, but they are eaten by 
the natives, and on the coast of British Columbia the In- 
dians kill for food the white-winged and surf scoters, which 
are locally known as ‘“‘siwash ducks.” During the migra- 
tion the American scoter occurs commonly on the Atlan- 
tic coast. 
CRANES 
In Canada we have three species of these birds, which 
have become so reduced in numbers as to necessitate the 
special protection they now receive under the Migratory 
Birds Convention. The whooping-crane is perhaps the 
most stately of all our large native birds, but at the present 
time it is threatened with extermination. Formerly it bred 
in all the large marshes on the prairies from Manitoba to 
the Rocky Mountains and northward. Thompson, in his 
“Birds of Manitoba” (1890), describes it as a tolerably 
common migrant and rare summer resident, and states 
that ‘‘this beautiful bird is common in the Touchwood 
