414 
ANATIDiE. 
NAT A TORES. 
ANATIDJE. 
EIDER DUCK, 
ST. CUTHBERT'S DUCK. 
SOMATERIA MOLLISSIMA. 
PLATE CXV. FIG. III. 
The males of this species, which spread themselves over 
the water in the neighbourhood in which the females are 
engaged in incubation, are a beautiful and highly interest¬ 
ing ornament of the northern seas. The Coquet, a small 
island at the mouth of the river of the same name, and 
near the hermitage of Walkwortli, is their southern boun¬ 
dary during the breeding-season; there they lay their eggs 
and hatch their young ones, close under the walls and 
upon the low roof of an inhabited house, where they re¬ 
main quietly seated upon their nests as undisturbed by 
your approach as the ducks and chickens of our domestic 
poultry, and will scarcely be driven from thence, so com¬ 
pletely is their roving, wild nature tamed and subdued at 
this season of the year, by an uncontrollable and wonder¬ 
ful impulse. On the Fern Islands, twenty miles farther to 
the north, they are more numerous, and though you may 
meet with an odd one here and there over the several islands, 
the bulk of them seem partial to one in particular, where 
are the remains of an old lighthouse, around the walls of 
which we found about a dozen of their nests. Some had 
even established themselves within, under the roof of the 
deserted rooms, where they were well protected from the 
