ing eggs from her neighbours. I have myself seen an egg of
_Anser bernicla_ in an eider's nest. The eggs are hatched by the
female, but the beautifully coloured male watches in her
neighbourhood and gives the signal of flight when danger approaches.
The nest consists of a rich, soft, down bed. The best down is got by
robbing the down-covered nest, an inferior kind by plucking the dead
birds. When the female is driven from the nest she seeks in haste to
scrape down over the eggs in order that they may not be visible. She
besides squirts over them a very stinking fluid, whose disgusting
smell adheres to the collected eggs and down. The stinking substance
is however so volatile or so easily decomposed in the air that the
smell completely disappears in a few hours. The eider, which some
years ago was very numerous on Spitzbergen,[63] has of late years
considerably diminished in numbers, and perhaps will soon be
completely driven thence, if some restraint be not laid on the
heedless way in which not only the Eider Islands are now plundered,
but the birds too killed, often for the mere pleasure of slaughter.
On Novaya Zemlya, too, the eider is common. It breeds, for instance,
in not inconsiderable numbers on the high islands in Karmakul Bay.
The eider's flesh has, it is true, but a slight flavour of train
oil, but it is coarse and far inferior to that of Bruennich's
guillemot. In particular, the flesh of the female while hatching is
almost uneatable.

[Illustration: HEADS OF THE
A. EIDER;
B. KING DUCK;
C. BARNACLE GOOSE;
D. WHITE-FRONTED GOOSE. ]

The king-duck occurs more sparingly than the common eider. On
Spitzbergen it is called the "Greenland eider," on Greenland the
"Spitzbergen eider," which appears to indicate that in neither place
is it quite at home. On Novaya Zemlya, on the other hand, it occurs
in larger numbers. Only once have I seen the nest of this bird,
namely, in 1873 on Axel's Islands in Bell Sound, where it bred in
limited numbers together with the common eider. In the years 1858
and 1864, when I visited the same place, it did not breed there.
Possibly its proper breeding place is on Novaya Zemlya at the inland
lakes a little way from the coast. The walrus-hunters say that its
eggs taste better than those of the common eider. They are somewhat
smaller and have a darker green colour.

On the Down Islands hatches, along with the eiders, the long-necked
_prutgaessen_, barnacle goose (_Anser bernicla