KING DUCK. S09 



Montagu thai 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 Duck, 

 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 

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

 mentions that it has been killed at Aldborough on the 

 coast of Suffolk ; 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 

 naturalists 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 Major Sabine 

 that this species were very abundant in the North Georgian 

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

 bourhood of fresh-water ponds, and feeding on the 

 aquatic vegetation. Captain James C. Ross, in the last 

 published Appendix, 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 crews of the vessels employed on those 



