IN THE SHETLANDS | 
wholly so—one would naturally think that here the 
food sought for is not the seaweed itself, but any live 
things that may be clinging to it. This, accordingly, 
was my provisional hypothesis, but practical investiga- 
tion hardly supported it, for on examining some of 
the seaweed, first in one spot and then another, along 
the track in which the birds had swum, I could find 
nothing whatever upon it—noticeably bare, indeed, it 
was. The eyes of an eider-duck are, no doubt, 
sharper than my own—or anybody’s. Still I do not 
believe that even the most sharp-sighted one could 
find anything on this seaweed, at least without search- 
ing for it, whereas these ducklings are constantly 
dipping and, apparently, as constantly feeding all the 
way along. Finding always, they never have the 
appearance of looking for what they find. To me they 
seem to be browsing in their little ducking way, just 
as sheep browse in a field. 
The seaweed here is not the long, brown sort, but 
another and almost equally common kind, which is 
shorter and covered with little lobes, shaped some- 
thing like an orange-pip, but of a slightly larger size 
——small grapes, perhaps, since they grow in bunches, 
is more what they resemble. They are full of a clear, 
gelatinous substance that might well be appreciated, 
and having, to the boot of all the other indications, 
actually seen something that looked very like one of 
them in the beak of a duckling, I imagine—and it is 
a pleasing imagination—that the latter, at any rate, 
derive some part of their sustenance from these their 
