KING DUCK. 311 



Montagu that he found this bird breeding in Papa Westra, 

 one of the Orkney Islands in the latter end of June. It 

 had six eggs, rather less than those of the Eider Dtfck, 

 and, like that bird, covered them with its own down. 

 The nest was on a rock impending the sea. An egg of 

 this species in my own collection is of a pale green 

 colour, two inches and rather more than a half long, by 

 one inch and three quarters in breadth. 



According to Mr. Thompson, this species has been 

 killed in Ireland, and the specimen is in the collection of 

 Dr. Robert Ball, of Dublin. The Rev. Leonard Jenyns 

 mentions that it has been killed at Aldborough on the 

 coast of Suffolk ; once, if not oftener on Breydon, in 

 Norfolk; and M. Vieillot says it has been taken in 

 France. 



Professor Nilsson of Sweden states that some visit the 

 most northern part of the Baltic, Denmark, and Norway. 

 A few breed in the Faroe Islands and at Iceland, but in 

 the higher northern regions they are numerous. Nova 

 Zembla, Spitzbergen, and various parts of Greenland, are 

 annually visited by these birds in vast numbers during the 

 breeding-season, and accounts were furnished by the na- 

 turalists who sailed with the various Arctic expeditions of 

 discovery from this country. In the Appendix to Sir 

 Edward Parry's first voyage, it is stated by Colonel Sabine 

 that this species were very abundant in the North Georgian 

 Islands, having their nests on the ground in the neighbour- 

 hood of fresh-water ponds, and feeding on the aquatic 

 vegetation. Sir James C. Ross, in the last published Ap- 

 pendix, says, " Vast numbers of this beautiful Duck resort 

 annually to the shores and islands of the Arctic Regions 

 in the breeding-season, and have on many occasions afforded 

 a valuable and salutary supply of fresh provision to the 



