THE EIDER. 
435 
structed with considerable skill in the tussocks of a 
coarse grass, whose straw lasts from season to season. 
The duck and drake build it in company. They free 
the roots from mould, net the fibres together, cement 
them firmly by a glutinous excretion, and pad the 
whole of the interior with their own fine down, felt- 
ing it well against the sides. 
The eider is an awkward bird on the wing, and 
hardly graceful in the water. Its square and block- 
like head, set clumsily upon the neck, remands one 
disagreeably of the Ptero-dactyls of fossil history. On 
the edges of the floes, while congregated together, 
quacking and feeding on the helpless Actinia, they 
seem another animal. The position of their legs, set 
very far back, throws the body, penguin-like, nearly 
upright ; and they move about erect, but easily and 
animated. When in numbers and at rest, they are 
wary and hard to approach ; but, like most of the An- 
atinse, are not easily diverted from their line of flight. 
Their apparent stupidity in sweeping over certain 
headlands, after our repeated slaughter of their fellows, 
was like that of our own canvas-backs at home. We 
killed numbers by station shooting. 
But the greatest enemies of the eider here are the 
whalers, who, whether from New York, New England, 
or Old England, are, like my friends the Van Nests in 
the veracious history of Mr. Knickerbocker, desperate 
robbers of birds' nests. We gathered two hundred ei- 
der eggs in one morning before breakfast; but this 
was gleaning a reaped field. The whaler, Jane O'Bo- 
ness, had four hundred and fifty dozen on board : she 
sent us a market-basketful. Parker's vessel, the Pa- 
cific, had nearly as many. And in the good old days 
of the fleet, when from sixty to ninety sail dared this 
