42 FROM NORTH POLE TO EQUATOR. 



bottom. These molluscs often form the sole food of eider-ducks, 

 and to procure them they may have to dive to considerable depths. 

 But it is the abundance of this food which preserves the eiders 

 from the scarcity from which so many other species of duck often 

 suffer severely. 



In April, or at the latest in the beginning of May, the pairs 

 approach nearer and nearer the fringe of reefs and the shores of 

 the mainland. Maternal cares are stirring in the breast of the 

 duck, and to these everything else is subordinated. Out at sea the 

 pair were so shy that they never allowed a ship or boat to get 

 near them, and feared man, if he ever happened to approach them, 

 more than any other living creature ; now in the neighbourhood of 

 the islands their behaviour changes entirely. Obeying her maternal 

 instincts, and these only, the duck swims to one of the brooding- 

 places, and paying no attention to the human inhabitants, waddles 

 on to the land. Anxiously the drake follows her, not without 

 uttering his warning " Ahua, ahua ", not without visible hesitation, 

 for every now and then he remains behind as if reflecting for a 

 while, and then swims forward once more. The duck, however, 

 pays no heed to all this. Careless of the whole world around 

 her, she wanders over the island seeking a suitable brooding-place. 

 Being somewhat fastidious, she is not satisfied with the first good 

 heap of sea-weed cast up by the tide, with the low juniper-bush 

 whose branches straggling on the ground offer safe concealment, 

 with the half -broken box which the owner of the island has placed 

 as a shelter for her, or with the heaps of twigs and brushwood 

 which he has gathered to entice her, but approaches the owner's 

 dwelling as fearlessly as if she were a domestic bird. She enters 

 it, walks about the floor, follows the housewife through rooms and 

 kitchen, and capriciously selects, it may be, the inside of the oven as 

 her resting-place, thereby forcing the housewife to have her bread 

 baked for weeks on another island. With manifest alarm the faith- 

 ful drake follows her as far as he dares; but when she, in his 

 opinion, so far neglects all considerations of safety as to dwell under 

 the same roof with human beings, he no longer tries to struggle 

 against her wayward whim, but leaves her to follow it alone, and 



