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CHAPTER “XI 
DARWINIAN EIDER-DUCKS 
HAVE seen a fair number of eider-ducks within 
the last few days. All the grown ones are females 
—not a male to be seen now—and the greater number 
of them are unaccompanied by ducklings. Of those 
that are, most have but one, and three is the maximum 
number that I have seen swimming together with 
their mother. Yet two years ago, in early June, the 
males here were courting the females, and when I 
left, about the middle of the month, but very few 
eggs, I believe, had been laid. This year, | learn, the 
birds have been very late in breeding, there having 
been some very “ rough weather,” as it is euphoniously 
called, in the spring—that is to say, the spring has 
been like a bad winter, and now the summer, though 
it has no very close resemblance to any of the four 
-seasons as I have seen them elsewhere, yet comes 
nearest to a phenomenally bad November. I wonder, 
therefore, that so many of these mother eiders are 
without their young ones, for they should all have 
hatched out a brood of them not so very long ago. 
Why, too, should so many be swimming with one 
duckling only? Were these single ones of any size, 
one could understand the others of the brood having 
escaped from tutelage, but, like all I have seen, they 
are but little fluffy things. It looks as though their 
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