348 NATATOKES. 



the greater coverts and some of the secondary quills with 

 white tips ; tail brownish black, belly dusky, mottled with 

 black. 



The eiders are less migratory than most others of the sea 

 ducks. The ice drives them to the south in the winter, but 

 they do not move far, and those which inhabit places where 

 the sea is never frozen remain in the same places all the year 

 round. They are rarely, if ever, seen on the southern shores 

 of England, though a few inhabit the Fern Islands, and also 

 some of the islets in the Firth of Forth. They are much 

 more numerous in the more northern and remote places, 

 the Orkneys, the Shetlands, and some of the more distant 

 and lonely of the Western Isles. Sulas-skerry (the Gannet's 

 rock), and its stack, which stand wild and lonely in the 

 North Sea, about thirty miles to the northward of Hoy- 

 head in Orkney, contain a number of these birds ; but there, 

 their eggs and young are liable to be destroyed by the skua 

 gulls, as they are by jackdaws on the islets farther to the 

 south. 



To the people of the remote north, whose only possession, 

 save a rock upon which to found their hut (which is chiefly 

 formed of materials that the sea produces or wafts), the eiders 

 have much of the character of domestic animals ; and they 

 have this advantage over the domestic animals of more sou- 

 thern places, that they put the people to no expense for food. 

 If the eggs are left undisturbed, the brood of the eider duck 

 does not exceed four ; but if the eggs are removed, she will 

 continue to lay for several weeks. The nest is on the ground, 

 upon one of the islets not far from the main island, or other- 

 wise near the sea. It is formed of marine plants, and lined 

 with exquisitely fine down, which the bird pulls from her 

 breast ; and as the eggs are deposited, she covers them with 

 more of that down. The bird is so tame, that she allows the 

 people to lift her from her nest, remove the down and eggs in 



