Along with the swimmers enumerated above, we find everywhere along these shores two species of eider, the _vanliga eidern_, common eider (_Somateria mollissima_, L.) and _praktejdern_, king-duck (_Somateria spectabilis_, L.). The former prefers to breed on low islands, which, at the season for laying eggs, are already surrounded by open water and are thus rendered inaccessible to the mountain foxes that wander about on the mainland. The richest eider islands I have seen in Spitzbergen are the Down Islands at Horn Sound. When I visited the place in 1858 the whole islands were so thickly covered with nests that it was necessary to proceed with great caution in order not to trample on eggs. Their number in every nest was five to six, sometimes larger, the latter case, according to the walrus-hunters, being accounted for by the female when she sits stealing 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. ]