PUFFINS. 73 



ner as the feather crest of the California quail. All these inhabit principally the 

 rocky shores of the Aleutian Islands, breeding in deep holes of the rocks and be- 

 tween the stones. Then we have the rhinoceros auk (Cerorhina monoceratci) with 

 its peculiar deciduous horn on top of the bill. We may also mention the parrot auk 

 ( Cyclorhynchus psittaculus), because of its most extraordinary bill, of which Cassin 

 says that " it seems to obtain a maximum of oddity amongst the queer bills of this fam- 

 ily of birds, the whole affair looking as if it might be a nose of wax, badly pinched and 

 jerked to the disadvantage of the under mandible," but especially because we wisli 

 to warn aga'nst the often-repeated theory, that the knife-shaped or falcate under 

 mandible, together with the compressed upper bill, are thus adapted for prying open 

 bivalve molluscs ; nobody has seen them open shells in that way, and, in fact, the food 

 of these birds consists only of fish-fry, crustaceans, cephalopods, and small molluscs which 

 they can swallow whole, as I have verified by numerous dissections. 



Nearly related to the foregoing is another small group of auks consisting of only 

 two genera and three well-defined species, viz., the puffins, or, as the German ornitholo- 

 gists sometimes call them, the masked divers, a name deriving its application from 

 the white face 'mask,' quite a distinctive feature in these birds; and not at all alluding 

 to the grotesque, high, extremely compressed, transversely grooved, and gayly col- 

 ored bill, much less to the deciduous nature of the basal parts of the bill, a peculiar- 

 ity which was not known until the French naturalist, L. Bureau, made the discovery 

 in 1876. By examining the bill of breeding birds we will find that it consists of two 

 differently colored parts, a, terminal one, with several transverse grooves, and a basal, 

 purplish, yellow, or green part separated from the former by a furrow, and again sub- 

 divided by other furrows into several distinct pieces ; nearest to the feathering of the 

 forehead is a somewhat swollen orlet, with numerous fine pits, like the top of a thimble ; 

 all these parts are hard like the tip of the bill, but the corner of the mouth is sur- 

 rounded by a soft wattle, the 'rosette;' and in the genus Fratercula, soft wattles are 

 also found under and above the eyes, the latter being the so-called ' horns.' Towards 

 the end of the breeding season the furrows between these basal plates become deeper, 

 until finally they are entirely detached, when they fall off, giving place to a brownish 

 soft membrane or 'cere.' Upon closer examination we now find that the outline of 

 the bill has changed considerably, it is much lower where it joins the feathering, and 

 the latter occupies now the place of the orlet with the numerous pits. Shortly after 

 midwinter these basal parts commence to swell and harden, becoming brighter colored 

 when the breeding season draws near ; the feathers on the orlet drop off, the pits indi- 

 cating where they w r ere originally inserted. Simultaneously Avith this shedding of the 

 bill, the double molt of the plumage takes place, but the only difference between the 

 breeding attire and that of the rest of the year is that the mask is white, against 

 gray or black, and that in the genus Lunda at that time an elegant tuft of long, pend- 



~ ^j c? ' i 



ant straw-yellow plumes is developed behind the eyes. Both sexes are absolutely 

 similar, and the shedding of bill and plumes identical in both. 



The Xorth Atlantic Ocean is inhabited by the common puffin (Fratercida arctic) 

 and its different geographical varieties. Its Pacific representative is the horned puffin 

 (F. corrticulata) with the base of the bill canary-yellow. More peculiar to the latt<-r 

 ocean is the tufted puffin (Lunda cirrhata) which occurs from the Farralones, outside 

 of San Francisco Bay, all along the northwestern coast and across the Aleutian Islands 

 to Kamtschatka. The present writer has had good opportunity of observing the 

 latter species while prosecuting ornithological researches on the Kamtschatkan 



