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. 



>Scofers.— 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 aU 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 



