336 PROCEEDINGS: BOSTON SOCIETY NATURAL HISTORY. 
allowed to rear a few young so that their numbers are not diminished. 
If the people of Labrador could be made to understand this, a new 
industry would arise and the Eider instead of being a vanishing race, 
would again populate the numerous islands along the southern 
coasts of the peninsula. At present the people are actively engaged 
in killing “the goose that lays the golden egg.” 
[Somateria v-nigra Gray. Pacific Eider. — Steams referred to this 
species as abundant in large flocks. It is of course conceivable that a few 
western birds may have strayed to the eastern coast and that Stearns shot 
one or two out of a flock of Common Eiders. The following note on the sub¬ 
ject by Leonhard Stejneger (’85) is interesting: “ Mr. W. A. Stearns, in a paper 
entitled ‘Notes on the Natural History of Labrador/ published in the ‘Pro¬ 
ceedings of the U. S. National Museum/ Vol. VI, 1883, says (p. 121) that 
the Somateria v-nigra, the Pacific Eider, is ‘abundant in large flocks in 
spring/ and that he himself ‘obtained specimens that had the decided ‘V- 
shapecl black mark’ on the chin.’ The statement has been doubted, and 
critics have considered it a mild expression when saying that it ‘ seems to 
require confirmation.’ It is not my intention to defend Mr. Stearns’ identifi¬ 
cation, but having found a notice which seems to point in the same direction, 
I think it safer to postpone a final decision in the matter. The notice to which 
I allude is found in Degland and Gerbe’s ‘ Ornithologie Europeenne (Paris, 
1867), II, p. 557, where, under the.head of Somateria mollissima, Mr. Gerbe 
writes: ‘Three or four specimens received from Newfoundland had under the 
throat two black lines similar to those of Somateria spectabilis, but of a color less 
deep. May they not be mules between the latter and the female Eider? Mr. 
de Selys-Longchamps, in his second note on the hybrids of the Anatidae, in 
quoting this example, remarks that Prince Ch. Bonaparte and Mr. W. Jardine 
consider these specimens as a distinct species, which they name Somateria 
v-nigrum, but that there is occasion to wait for new observations before decid¬ 
ing A’] 
Somateria spectabilis (Linn.). 
King Eider; 
“King Duck”; 
“King-bird”; “Passing Duck.” 
Abundant transient visitor; not uncommon summer resident in 
the north. 
The King Eider breeds from Nachvak north. The greater portion 
breed on the west coast of Greenland. Stearns refers to a breeding 
record of this species on an island opposite Mingan, an exceptional 
and rather doubtful southern instance. Maeoun records the taking 
of a set of three eggs of this species at Nachvak by G. Ford in 1897. 
Low mentions the shooting of one in the interior at Lake Mistassini. 
The King Eider is generally an earlier arrival in the spring than the 
