216 SOMATERIA LABEADOMA. 



Mr. Wallace speaks (Ibis, 1874, p. 409) of those who have freed them- 

 selves ''from the trammels of the old rostral system." Mr. Sharpe, it is 

 true, has differentiated the English Eider from the American form of the 

 same bird, and given the latter the name S. dress eri (cf. Nature, 1871, p. 51), 

 stating that the chief divergence '' lies in the bill/' v\^hich he considers so 

 strong that he appends v^oodcuts ; he, hov^ever, adds one or two facts of 

 minor importance in addition. Other beaks, however, in the same genus 

 vary from S. moUissima, as S, spectabilis and S.Jischeri. 



The female plumage of S. labradoria differs somewhat from that of the 

 normal Eiders ; and Audubon, Wilson, and Bonaparte did not place the 

 species with Somateria ; but the first and last made a Fuligula of it, just as 

 they did of S, molUssima^ and the second called it Anas labradora. 



There is one point of resemblance, however, which (though a superficial 

 one), in the absence of the bird in the flesh, decided me. It is the presence 

 in the male Pied Duck of those stiff and glistening feathers in the head, 

 which (so far as I have been able to discover), among Ducks, belong to the 

 Eiders alone. 



Nevertheless too much importance must not be given to such a cha- 

 racter; for Dr. Otto Finsch remarks (P. Z. S. 1875, p. 557), on the genus of 

 Fruit- Pigeons Chrys(£na :—'' The small feathers, with exception of those of 

 the head in Chryscena luteovirens, are remarkable for their narrowed cylindrical 

 form. But this structure is not to be found in Chryscena victor at all ; so 

 that if one w^ere to take the structure of the feathers solely as a distinguishing 

 generic character of Chryscena, C. victor could not be placed in the genus." 



These feathers in S. labradoria, resembling bristles, are very peculiar to 

 the touch. They are stronger in S. fscheri than in S. mollissima ; in 

 S. spectabilis they appear less. They exist in Steller's Duck. Macgillivray 

 (vol. V. p. 149) thus describes those on the head of S, mollissima : — " Short, 

 soft, blended, rounded, with the terminal filaments disunited ; the occipital 



