48 FROM NORTH POLE TO EQUATOR. 



them in one respect, for they are incomparably more nimble on 

 land, being able to move about with surprising activity. If they 

 become tired near an island the mother leads them on to it, and 

 they run about like young partridges, and, by simply crouching 

 down at the first warning cry, conceal themselves so effectively 

 that they can only be found after long searching. If they get 

 fatigued when they are far from land, the mother spreads out her 

 wings a little and offers them these and her back as a resting-place. 

 As they never know want they grow with extraordinary rapidity, 

 and at the end of two months will have attained nearly the size, 

 certainly all the adroitness, of their mother. The father soon joins 

 them in order to pass the winter with his family — usually in com- 

 pany with many other families, so that a flock of thousands may 

 occasionally be formed. 



The high and annually increasing price of its incomparable 

 down makes the eider-duck the most valuable of all berg-birds. A 

 thousand pairs of ducks form a possession well worth having. At 

 least three or four thousand pairs brood on each island, and the 

 fortunate possessor of still more numerously visited breeding-places 

 derives revenues through his birds which many a German land- 

 owner might envy. But besides the eider-ducks there breed also 

 on the holms oyster-catchers and black guillemots, whose eggs are 

 preserved and used for food for months, or are exported to a distance. 

 Furthermore, the flesh of the young birds is sometimes salted for 

 winter use, and thus the holms yield a rich harvest. They are 

 therefore strictly preserved and protected by special laws.^ 



A brooding island peopled by eider-ducks and other sea birds 

 presents a spectacle as unique as it is fascinating. A more or less 

 thick cloud of brilliantly white sea-gulls veils such an island. With- 

 out intermission troops and swarms of brooding birds arrive and 

 fly out to sea again, visiting the neighbouring reefs also, and some- 

 times marvellously adorning the drained moorland, now covered 

 with green turf, in front of the red log-huts. With justifiable 

 pride a dweller on the Lofodens pointed to several hundred gulls 

 which were assembled directly before his door seeking for insects. 

 " Our land is too poor, too cold, and too rough", he said, " for us to 



