BIRDS. 105 



throe are found. Always nest in crevices and fissures of cliffs, where it 

 is often extremely difficult to get at them. They are very tame ; but it 

 is next to an im^iossibility to shoot one on the water if the bird is watch- 

 ing you, for they dive quite as quickly as a loon. I have seen three 

 entirely black si^ecimens, which I considered to be TJ. carho. One was 

 procured in Cumberland, but was lost, with many others, after we arrived 

 in the United States. I have examined ispecimens of carho since in the 

 Smithsonian collection, and my bird was nothing but a melanistic si)eci- 

 men of U. grylle. I also have seen an albino specimen. 



There Avere a few birds in an air-hole in the ice near our harbor in the 

 latter days of June that to all api)earance resembled the autumn i^lum- 

 age of the young; but the ice was too treacherous for me to venture out, 

 so I sent an Eskimo. He returned and reported them " Kanitucalo 

 pechulak" (very near a Guillemot). But if he meant that they were 

 in imperfect j)lumage or another species closely resembling grylle^ I could 

 not make oat. He could not get close enough to the air-hole to procure 

 the si)ecimen he killed, and I never saw or heard anything more of them. 



84, Lomvia arra, Brandt. 



"Akpa," Cumberland Eskimo and Greeulandors. 



I had hoped to be able to throw some light on the subject of the re- 

 lationship of the Murres, but I find my material corresponds with my 

 opportunities for observation — very poor and unsatisf\ictory. I first met 

 these birds in numbers oft' the coast of Eesolution Island, but many were 

 seen farther south. About Grinnell Bay and Frobisher Straits they are 

 common even as far as the mouth of Cumberland, but apparently quite 

 rare in the w^aters of that sound The Eskimo say they formerly bred 

 in great numbers ou the Kikkerton Islands ; but they have now appa- 

 rently abandoned them. There are large breeding-places about Cape 

 Mercy and Walsingham, the largest "rookery" being on the Padlie 

 Islands in Exeter Sound. On the Greenland coast they are very abund- 

 ant, breeding by thousands in many localities. Observed plentifully in 

 the pack-ice in July. All the sx)ecimens collected by me were typical 

 arra. I procured but one single troile. The var. rlngvia, Brlinn., Gov- 

 ernor Fencker has not met during eleven years' collecting on the Green- 

 land coast; and var. troile appears to be far from common. There is a 

 remarkable variation in the distribution of the dark color, some being- 

 white on the throat quite to the bill, and again 1 have seen specimens 

 entirely black. The dark markings on the eggs of L. arra and troile, as 

 \\ell as A. torcla, can readily be obliterated with hike- warm water. 



