178 SPORT IN NORWAY. 



all the care that has been taken of them, they have 

 greatly diminished, and it is to be feared still continue 

 to do so every year. 



As above stated, a very large quantity of down used 

 to be exported from Iceland, but entirely for the 

 Danish market. In the year 1750, the company in 

 that island sold as large a quantity as amounted to 

 3745 banco dollars. The relative value of clean and 

 uncleaned down in those days may be ascertained from, 

 the following computation, that the former was valued 

 at forty-five fish per one pound, and the latter at six- 

 een fish per one pound. 



The earliest mention that I can find of eider-down in 

 any English writings occurs in " The Description of 

 Europe, and the Voyages of Othere and Wulfetan," 

 by Alfred the Great. Otherus, who was a Norwegian 

 nobleman, speaking of the Finns and Biarmians, says 

 that the revenues of the nobles "chiefly consisted 

 in skins of animals, down, and whalebone," and that 

 " some of the richest proprietors had to pay as much as 

 forty bushels of down." 



The use of eider-down was believed, in the early 

 part of the last century, to be excessively injurious to 

 the health, producing epileptic seizures ; which opinion 

 is refuted by Bartholin, a Danish writer on medicine, 

 who says : " Neither ought that idle report to frighten 

 us, that epilepsy is brought' on by the use of these 



