PUFFIXS. 73 



ner as the feather crest of tlie California (|uail. All tliese inha))it ]>riiifi]iallv the 

 rocky shores of the Aleutian Ishuuls, breeding in deep holes of the rocks and he- 

 tween the stoties. Then we liavc the rhinoceros auk {Cerorhbta monoceratu) with 

 its peculiar deciduous horn on top of the hill. AVc may also mention the ]>arrot auk 

 (Ci/clor/ii/iichus jisittaculi/g), 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 bo a nose of wax, badly ])inchcd and 

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

 to warn against 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 offish-fry, crustaceans, cej^halopods, 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 pufKns, or, as the German ornitholo- 

 gists sometimes call them, the masked divers, a name deriving its a]>plication from 

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

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

 ored bill, much less to the deci<luous nature of the basal parts of the bill, a jieeuliar- 

 ity which was not known until the French naturalist, L. Hureau, 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 ]iart sejiarated from the former by a fui'row, 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 Fratercuht, 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 Iirownish 

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

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

 the latter occujnes now the jilace 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 ilrop off, the ]iits indi- 

 cating where they were origiuallv inserted. Simultaneously with this shedding of the 

 bill, the double molt of the plumage takes ]ilace, 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 tliat in the genus Lunda at that time an elegant tuft of long, pend- 

 ant straw-yellow plumes is develo]ie(l behind the eyes. Both sexes are absolutely 

 similar, and the shedding of bill and ))lumes identical in both. 



The North Atlantic Ocean is inh.ai)iteil by the common jiuftin {Fniterctila firctica) 

 and its different geo;fraphical varieties. Its Pacific representative is the horned puttin 

 (/\, co>V(/e»(/((^f) with the base of the bill canary-yi'llow. More ]ieculiar to the latter 

 ocean is the tufted \niffii\( Lunda cirrhaUt) which occurs from the Farrali«nes,outsiilo 

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

 to Kamtschatka. The ]iresent writer has had good o]>]iortunity of observin'.r the 

 latter species while jirosecuting ornithological researches on the Kamtschaikan 



