44 FROM NORTH POLE TO EQUATOR. 



stretching her neck and twisting it in intricate snake-like curves, 

 she can find no more. Yet when was a mother, even a duck 

 mother, at a loss when her children had to be provided for? Our 

 duck is certainly at none. She herself has no more down, but her 

 mate bears it untouched on his breast and back. Now it is his 



Fig. 2. Colony of Eider-ducks. 



turn. And though he may perhaps rebel, having a lively recollec- 

 tion of former years, he is the husband and she the wife, therefore 

 he must obey. Without compunction the anxious mother rifles his 

 plumage, and in a few hours, or at most within two days, she 

 has plucked him as bare as herself. That the drake, after such 

 treatment, should fly out to the open sea as soon as possible, and 

 associate for some months only with his fellows, troubling himself 

 not in the least about his mate and her coming brood, seems to me 



