CHAPTEE VIII. 
THE EIDER DUCK 
(Somateria mollissima ). 
“ The waves may rage and the winds may roar, 
But he fears not wreck nor need, 
For he rides the sea, in its stormy strength, 
As a strong man rides his steed ! ” 
Mary Howitt. 
He who imagines that the vertical rays of a tropical 
sun alone are capable of producing, as it were by magic, 
those brilliant colours which decorate the plumage of the 
bird,—that creature loved of the light!—must see the 
Eider Duck, so as to enable him to acknowledge his error. 
However beauteous and brilliant may be the plumage of 
the feathered denizens of Southern America or Southern 
Asia, they most assuredly cannot surpass that of this 
arctic child of the ocean. I know of no other aquatic 
bird which possesses a more lovely dress than the Eider 
Duck: black, red, ash-gray, ice-green, white, brown, and 
yellow, intermingle with each other, so as to form a robe 
of extraordinary beauty. 
We possess three species of Eider Ducks in Europe, but 
which one bears off the palm for beauty is difficult to say. 
The colouring of the species we are now about to describe 
is as follows :—breast, belly, wings and tail, lower part of 
