uld see ducks; and a duck sat in the scraper.

"A grassy bank close by had been cut into square patches like a
chess-board, (a square of turf of about eighteen inches being removed,
and a hollow made,) and all were filled with ducks. A windmill was
infested, and so were all the out-houses, mounds, rocks, and crevices.
The ducks were everywhere. Many of them were so tame that we could
stroke them on their nests; and the good lady told us that there was
scarcely a duck on the island which would not allow her to take its
eggs without flight or fear."

128. But upon the back of the canvas, as it were, of this pleasant
picture--on the back of the leaf, in his book, p. 65,--this description
being given in p. 66,--Doctor Hartwig tells us, in his own peculiar
soppy and sandy way--half tearful, half Dryasdusty, (or may not we
say--it sounds more Icelandic--'Dry-as-sawdusty,') these less cheerful
facts. "The eiderdown is easily collected, as the birds are quite tame.
The female having laid five or six pale greenish-olive eggs, in a nest
thickly lined with her beautiful down, the collectors, after carefully
removing the bird, rob the nest of its contents; after which they
replace her. She then begins to lay afresh--though this time only three
or four eggs,--and again has recourse to the down on her body. But her
greedy persecutors once more rifle her nest, and oblige her to line it
for the third time. Now, however, her own stock of down is exhausted,
and with a plaintive voice she calls her mate to her assistance, who
willingly plucks the soft feathers from his breast to supply the
deficiency. If the cruel robbery be again repeated, which in former
times was frequently the case, the poor eider-duck abandons the spot,
never to return, and seeks for a new home where she may indulge her
maternal instinct undisturbed by the avarice of man."

129. Now, as I have above told you, these two statements are given on
the two sides of the same leaf; and the reader must make what he may of
them. Setting the best of my own poor wits at them, it seems to me that
the merciless abstraction of down is indeed the usual custom of the
inhabitants and visitors; but that the 'good lady,' referred to by Mr.
Shepherd, manages things differently; and in consequence we are
presently farther told of her, (bottom of p. 65,) that "when she first
became possessor of the island, the produce of down from the ducks was
not more than fifteen pounds weight in the