68 SCOTER DUCK. 
but seem to prefer the neighbourhood of the ocean, differing 
in this respect from the cormorant, which often makes extensive 
visits to the interior. 
The scoters are said to appear on the coasts of France in 
great numbers, to which they are attracted by a certain kind 
of small bivalve shellfish, called vacmeaux, probably differing 
little from those already mentioned. Over the beds of these 
shellfish the fishermen spread their nets, supporting them, 
horizontally, at the height of two or three feet from the bot- 
tom. At the flowing of the tide the scoters approach in great 
numbers, diving after their favourite food, and soon get entan- 
gled in the nets. ‘Twenty or thirty dozen have sometimes 
been taken in a single tide. ‘These are sold to the Roman 
Catholics, who eat them on those days on which they are for- 
bidden by their religion the use of animal food, fish excepted ; 
these birds and a few others of the same fishy flavour, having 
been exempted from the interdict, on the supposition of their 
being cold-blooded, and partaking of the nature of fish.* 
The scoter abounds in Lapland, Norway, Sweden, Russia, 
and Siberia. It was also found by Osbeck, between the 
islands of Java and St Paul, lat. 30 and 34, in the month of 
June.+ 
This species is twenty-one inches in length, and thirty-four 
in extent, and is easily distinguished from all other ducks by 
the peculiar form of its bill, which has at the base a large ele- 
vated knob of a red colour, divided by a narrow line of yellow, 
which spreads over the middle of the upper mandible, reach- 
ing nearly to its extremity, the edges and lower mandible are 
black ; the eyelid is yellow; irides, dark hazel; the whole 
plumage is black, inclining to purple on the head and neck ; 
legs and feet, reddish. 
The female has little or nothing of the knob on the bill ; 
her plumage above a sooty brown, and below of a greyish 
white. 
* Bewick. + Voyage, i. p. 120. 

