132 BRITISH “SEA® BIRDS. 
hordes of these birds at St. Kilda, at the Farne 
Islands, and elsewhere. Even whilst I write, I 
can once more see the struggling, quarrelling, 
rowdy hosts of Guillemots that crowd the famous 
“Pinnacles” ; still see them pouring off in endless 
streams, headlong into the water, as I prepared 
to scale their haunt. Once more memory recalls 
and paints in vivid scene the beetling St. Kildan 
cliffs, with their rows and rows of white-breasted 
Guillemots, sitting tier upon tier, upwards and up- 
wards towards the dark blue sky; my tiny boat 
tossing like a cork on the wild Atlantic swell, 
and the countless swarms of Guillemots swimming 
in the sea around me, hastening to the cliffs or 
returning from them, beaten off by more fortunate 
possessors of a place. 
The Guillemot lays a single egg, without making 
a nest of any kind for its reception. If this egg 
be taken, however, the bird will lay a second or a 
third, and advantage is taken of this fact by those 
persons that gather them for a livelihood. The 
egg of no other known bird varies to such an 
extraordinary extent as that of the Guillemot, 
whilst few, if any, are more beautiful. Greens, 
browns, yellows, pale blues, and white, form the 
principal ground colour; the markings, which take 
the form of spots, blotches, streaks, and zones, 
are composed of browns, grays, and pinks, of 
every possible tint. One variety is white, intricately 
laced, netted, and streaked with pink; another is 
