THE PUFFIN 295 
Rotche. It is an indefatigable swimmer, and has considerable 
powers of flight ; but it does not possess the faculty of diving to the 
Same degree as the Divers and Grebes, as it generally stays but a 
short time under water. Hence it must find its food near the surface ; 
and this is supposed to consist of the small crustaceous animals which 
are so abundant in the Arctic waters. Little Auks are eminently 
social birds, and have been observed occasionally in such numbers on 
the water and floating masses of ice as almost to hide their resting- 
place. They rarely travel far south; and when they visit our 
shores, which is in winter, and after tempestuous weather, they are 
supposed to have been driven hither against their will. Instances 
are recorded of specimens having been found far inland, disabled 
or dead. It lays only a single egg. 
THE PUFFIN 
FRATERCULA ARCTICA 
Crown, collar, and upper parts, black ; cheeks, region of the eyes, and throat, 
greyish white; under parts pure white; bill bluish grey at the base, 
yellow in the middle, bright red at the tip; upper mandible with three 
transverse furrows, lower, with two; iris whitish; orbits red; feet 
orange-red. Length twelve and a half inches. Eggs whitish, with 
indistinct ash-coloured spots. 
UNLIKE the majority of sea-birds which have been passing under 
our notice, Puffins visit the shores of the British Isles in summer, 
and even in winter they are not absent. They make their appear- 
ance about April or May, not scattering themselves indiscriminately 
along the coast, but resorting in vast numbers to various selected 
breeding-places, from the Scilly Islands to the Orkneys. Their 
home being the sea, and their diet small fish, they possess the 
faculties of swimming and diving to a degree of perfection. They 
have, moreover, considerable powers of flight ; but on land their 
gait is only a shuffling attempt at progress. Their vocation on 
shore is, however, but a temporary one, and requires no great amount 
of locomotion. Soon after their arrival they set to work about 
their nests. Fanciful people who class birds according to their 
constructive faculty as weavers, basket-makers, plasterers, and so on, 
would rank Puffins among miners. Building is an art of which 
they are wholly ignorant, yet few birds are lodged more securely. 
With their strong beaks, they excavate for themselves holes in the 
face of the cliff to the depth of about three feet, and at the extremity 
the female lays a solitary egg—solitary, that is to say, unless another 
bird takes shelter in the same hole, which is not unfrequently the 
case. Puffins generally show no overweening partiality for their 
own workmanship ; sloping cliffs which have been perforated by 
rabbits are favourite places of resort ; and here they do not at all 
scruple to avail themselves of another’s labour, or, if necessary, 
to eject by force of beak the lawful tenant. If the soil be unsuited 
