366 THE GOOSANDER WILD DUCK. 



The eider-down, when pure, is 01 such value that it is sold in 

 Lapland for two dollars a pound. It is extremely soft and warm , 

 and so light and expansive, that a couple of handsful squeezed together, 

 are sufficient to fill a down quilt ; a covering like a feather-bed, used 

 in cold countries instead of a common quilt or blanket. 



The Greeulanders kill these birds with darts; pursuing them in 

 their little boats, watching their course by the air-bubbles when they 

 dive, and always striking at them when they rise 



THE GOOSANDER. 



The Goosander inhabits the remote northern regions of both con- 

 tinents, being seen 

 during summer on 

 the borders of grassy 

 lakes and streams 

 through the whole 

 of the fur countries, 

 and are among the 

 latest of their tribe in 

 autumn to seek an 

 asylum in milder 

 climates. They are 

 said to breed in 

 every latitude in the 

 Russian empire, but 

 mostly in the north. 

 They are common also in Kamtschatka and extend through northern 

 Europe, to the wintry shores of Iceland and Greenland. Many, 

 however, pass the breeding season in the Orkneys, and these scarcely 

 ever find any necessity to migrate. They are seen in small families 

 or companies of six or eight in the United States in winter, and 

 frequent the sea shores, lakes and rivers, continually diving in quest 

 of their food, which consists principally of fish and shelly mollusca. 

 They are also very gluttonous and voracious, like the Albatross 

 sometimes swallowing a fish too large to enter whole into the 

 etomach, which therefore lodges in the oesophagus till the lower 

 part is digested before the remainder can follow. The roughness 

 of the tongue, covered with incurved projections, and the form 

 of the bent serratures which edge the bill, appear all purposely 

 contrived with reference to its piscatory habits. In the course of the 

 season they migrate probably to the extremity of the Union, being 

 ecu in winter in the Mississippi and Missouri, from whence at the 

 approach of spring they migrate north or in the interior to breed 



THE COMMON WILD DUCK. 



Wild Ducks frequent marshy places; but nowhere in such abund- 

 ance as in Lincolnshire, (England,) where prodigious numbers of them 



