150 
SCOTER DUCK. 
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 forbidden by their religion the use of animal food, 
fish excepted ; these birds, and a few others of the same fishy fla- 
vor, 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.f 
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 elevated 
knob, of a red color, divided by a narrow line of yellow, which 
spreads over the middle of the upper mandible, reaching nearly 
to its extremity, the edges and lower mandible are black ; the eye- 
lid is yellow, iris 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 grayish white. 
Bewick. 
t Voy. I, p. 120. 
