214 ^^^ POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



guished by their clear voices. They are the police of the mountain, 

 the guardians of the safety of the bird-republic ; for as soon as they 

 perceive anything that betokens danger, say an approaching boat, they 

 cry out in chorus and give an alarm that instantly sets the whole 

 population in motion. The gulls immediately send forth scouts which 

 go toward the boat, soaring, screeching around it, swooping down 

 upon it with the speed of an arroAv, and often touching the boatman 

 with the tips of their pinions. The mass of the army follows the 

 scouts. They come by thousands and thousands, in so thick masses as 

 to obscure the sun. The explorer is forced to come to the shore veiled 

 in this living, fluttering, screeching, rushing cloud. The ducks, if they 

 are not actually sitting, fly, the snipes hastily seek the sea, and the 

 wagtails follow in noisy flight, but the host of gulls stands firm, screams 

 and bustles and whirls and plunges, as if it could prevent the advance 

 by noise and sham fighting. One may walk the shore and see noth- 

 ing but birds and nests, and hear nothing but the discordant din of 

 voices, accompanied by the thunderous rushing of thousands of wings 

 lashing the air. 



A more quiet picture is afforded by the hill where the auks brood. 

 They resemble the eider-duck in shape, except that their bills are sharp 

 and not flat, like those of the latter. There are three species of them, 

 M'hich are distinguished from one another by the length of the bill and 

 its curvature. AH three species live and brood in the same places. I 

 was told of a mountain where a million of them had built their nests. 

 I am siire of one thing — that no man has ever seen a million birds, even 

 though he has traveled over half the earth. Doubting the accounts, 

 I visited the described mountain. On a bright summer day ray com- 

 panion and myself took a boat and rowed toward it, over the smooth, 

 transparent water, between beautiful islands, followed by the screech- 

 ing of the startled gulls. High above us on a towering ridge we 

 saw the watchful ospreys ; by our side, on right and left, along the 

 shore-cliffs, the sitting eider-ducks. Finally we came to the populous 

 part of the mountain, which is from three hundred and twenty to three 

 hundred and thirty feet high, and saw really immense numbers of birds 

 sitting on the ridges. The higher parts of the cone were covered with 

 a brown spoonwort, and as we approached the shore the birds drew 

 back thither, and suddenly disappeared from view as if by concerted 

 ac^reement. "When we had reached the shore and landed, and were 

 wondering what had become of the hosts of birds, we found the ground 

 burrowed all over with holes that looked like common rabbit-holes. 

 "NVe soon learned that they were the entrances to the nest-chambers of 

 the auks. The holes are large enough to permit the birds to pass 

 through, and then widen on the inside so as to give room for the nest 

 and the two birds. As we climbed toward the height, the tenants first 

 carefully and anxiously peered at us, then slipped out and threw them- 

 selves screaming into the sea, which was soon covered, as far as the 



