ZOOLOGY. 3:23 



whilst the whole island under foot was perforated and undermined by 

 the petrels. He says : 



" I first took a tour all around the grassy edge of the cliffs to look 

 for gulls' eggs. I got two dozen of the ' steering ' gulls' eggs, and the 

 men eight dozen. Tore up the turf with my hands, following the lit- 

 tle galleries with my fingers, and soon secured four dozen and a half 

 of petrels' eggs, and two of the parent birds as specimens. I could 

 have obtained, I suppose, a thousand dozen of the eggs if I had wished, 

 and every mother bird with them, as the poor little things crowd back 

 into their holes, making not the slightest noise or resistance, whilst 

 they behold the roof rudely torn from their dwelling, and their eggs 

 taken away. In no instance, except one, did I find more than one 

 egg in a nest, and in that there were but two ; and yet some of the 

 birds were hatching, as some of the eggs contained the embryo with 

 its head and body so far developed as to clearly identify the species. 

 The smell of the birds is at first very offensive ; indeed, we perceived 

 it at a distance of two miles from the island. This smell is not occa- 

 sioned by any decayed fish or other extraneous matter, as the nests 

 and surrounding turf are invariably very clean, the nest itself being 

 lined at the bottom with a very little dry fine grass. The odor is pe- 

 culiar to the bird and its egg, and is particularly perceptible in the 

 dark brown oily fluid which, seemingly in self-defence, these birds 

 eject from their bills. 



" The sun was just rising when we landed on the island, and al- 

 though we had seen seA r eral petrels flying about the boat in the night 

 and at dawn of day on our passage, yet on the island not one was to 

 be seen. All were under ground, where at first you could hear their 

 twittering, as if arranging about nests and accommodations ; but soon 

 after sunrise they became almost entirely silent, at least so far as the 

 screaming of the gulls, which was always about the same, would allow 

 you to judge. On taking a petrel out of its nest, it would not on be- 

 ing set down attempt to fly at first, but would endeavor to dig its way 

 down into some of the broken holes. Most of the nests seemed to be 

 old ones newly fitted up, and I found several such where the bird had 

 brought quite a sprinkling of fresh dirt out to the surface. They 

 seem to form their galleries not so much by carrying out the surplus 

 dirt, however, as by pressing themselves through the soft, turfy soil. 

 A great many ants had made their nests among the galleries, but did 

 not seem to incommode the birds ; perhaps, indeed, they serve them 

 for food at times." 



ORNITHOLOGICAL CLOCK. 



As botanists have constructed a flower-clock, so (we read in the for- 

 eign journals) a German woodsman has recently invented an ornitho- 

 logical clock, by marking the hours of the waking and the first notes of 

 the little singers. The signal is given by the chaffinch, the earliest 

 riser among all the feathery tribes. Its song precedes the dawn, and 

 is heard in summer from half-past one to two o'clock, A. M. Next, 

 from two to half-past three o'clock, comes the black-cap (Sylvia atri- 

 capilla), whose warblings would equal those of the nightingale if they 

 were not so very short. From half-past two to three o'clock the quail 



