94: B1RD NAMES. [No.. 27. 



Length twenty-four to twenty-six inches ; extent thirty-nine 

 to forty-two inches. 



AMERICAN EIDER: COMMON EIDER: very generally known 

 along the coast from New Brunswick to Rhode Island as SEA 

 DUCK, or SEA DUCK AND DRAKE; at Barnstable, Mass., SHOAL 

 DUCK and ISLES OP SHOALS DUCK; the latter name being like- 

 wise heard at New Bedford, same state, and in Connecticut at 

 Stonington and Stony Creek : known also at New Bedford and 

 Stony Creek as WAMP (this being of Indian origin, probably ; 

 wompi, white). 



Eiders are Northern birds, and are seldom seen on the Con- 

 necticut coast, though they congregate every winter in large 

 flocks in Muskegat Channel, at the west end of Nantucket, and 

 sometimes, it is said, wander as far south as the Delaware. 



Giraud, in Birds of Long Island, 1844, speaks of the species 

 being called SQUAM DUCK in Maine, and De Kay in Zoology of 

 New York, 1844, of its being known on Long Island as BLACK 

 AND WHITE COOT and BIG SEA DUCK. The latter author states 

 also that it is called Squaw Duck on the Maine coast, but I re- 

 gard this as simply a misprint of name previously mentioned by 

 Giraud. (Though these books bear same date, Giraud's was first 

 published) 



The common Eider of Europe, Somateria mollissima, is known 

 as Dunter, Dunter Goose, Dunter Duck, and Cuthbert Duck or 

 Saint Cuthbert's Duck, among other names ; I add these because 

 until a few years ago ornithologists regarded the two birds as 

 one and the same. With the exception of a rather slight differ- 

 ence in the shape of the bill* there is little or no difference 

 between them, and the difference between the bills of the females 

 of the two species is in some cases very difficult to detect. 



The superiority of the down of the eider every one is more 

 or less acquainted with, and the flesh is said to be very good 

 under certain conditions, but I have never tried it. Audu- 



* In mollissima the elongated encroachments of bill upon forehead are nar- 

 rower, and run back straighter, and terminate more acutely. 



