GUINEA FOWL 399 



and progeny. After that time it commonly happens that a few 

 examples are occasionally met mth in bays and shallow waters. 

 Tempestuous weather will drive ashore a large number in a state of 

 utter destitution — many of them indeed are not unfrequently 

 washed up dead — but what becomes of the bulk of the birds, not 

 merely the comparatively few thousands that are natives of Britain, 

 but the hundreds of thousands, not to say millions, that are in 

 summer denizens of more northern latitudes, no one can yet say. 

 This mystery is not peculiar to the Guillemot, but is shared by all 

 the Alddx that inhabit the Atlantic Ocean. Examples stray every 

 season across the Bay of Biscay, are found off the coasts of Spain 

 and Portugal, enter the Mediterranean and reach Italian waters, or, 

 keeping further south, may even touch the Madeiras, Canaries, or 

 Azores ; but these bear no proportion whatever to the mighty hosts 

 whose position and movements they no more reveal than do the 

 vedettes of a well-appointed army. The common or Foolish (as it 

 is often named) Guillemot of both sides of the Atlantic is replaced 

 further northward by a species of a stouter build, the A. arra or 

 A. bruennichi of ornithologists, and on the west coast of North 

 America by the A. calif arnica. These have essentially the same 

 habits, and the structural resemblance between all of them and the 

 Auks is so great that of late several systematists have relegated 

 them to the genus Alca, confining the genus Uria to the Guillemots 

 of a very distinct group, of which the type is the U. gryllc, the 

 Black Guillemot of British authors, the Dovekey or Greenland 

 Dove of sailors, the Tysty of Shetlanders. This bird assumes in 

 summer an entirely black plumage with the exception of a Avhite 

 patch on each wing, while in winter it is beautifully marljled with 

 white and black. Allied to it as species or geographical races are 

 the U. manclti, U. columba, and U. carbo. All these differ from the 

 larger Guillemots and other members of the genus, Alca, as here 

 used, by laying two or three eggs, which are generally placed in 

 some secure niche, while the latter lay but a single egg, which is 

 invariably exposed on a bare ledge. 



GUINEA FOWL, a well-known domestic gallinaceous bird, so 

 called from the country whence in modern times it was brought to 

 Europe, the Meleagris and Avis or Gallma Numidica of ancient 

 authors.^ Little can be positively stated of the wild stock to which 

 we owe our tame birds, nor can the period of its reintroduction 



^ Columella {Dc He Hustica, viii. cap. 2) distinguishes the Meleagris from the 

 Gallina Africana or Numidica, the latter having, he says, a red wattle {palca, 

 a reading obviously preferable to galea), while it was blue in the former. This 

 would look as if the Meleagris had sprung from what is now called Numida 

 ptilorhyncha, while the Gallina Jfricana originated in the N. meleagris, — species 

 which, as will be seen by the text, have a different range, and if so the fact 

 would point to two distinct introductions — one by Greeks, the other by Latins. 



