IN THE SHETLANDS 89 
gether explained in this way, and I look upon it as an 
inherited tendency. But may not the habit have 
originated in the hunger of the chick, and have been 
worked in, sexually, at a later age, when the repro- 
ductive system had become active ? Strong emotion, 
one may suppose, would require an outward manifesta- 
tion in the shape of movements of some sort, and it 
would be such as were already known, that, by first 
coming to hand, would be likely to be first employed. 
If we had been accustomed to do one kind of work 
for which we had a suitable implement, and it became 
suddenly necessary to do some other for which we had 
none, it would be natural for us to catch up the one 
we had and make a shift with that. If a swim- 
bladder can be worked in as a lung, or a pair of legs 
as part of a mouth, then why not a hunger-signal as 
a love-signal? Bethisasit may, it is certainly strange 
to see little fluffy chicks on the nest going through the 
same sort of pantomime as their parents do when in 
love. But why dol call them little? I have never 
seen such big baby things, and their size makes them 
look all the weirder. So great, indeed, is the chick’s 
fluffiness that though the wings are tiny and the tail 
invisible, it looks almost, if not quite, as big as the 
graceful and delicately shaped parent bird sitting 
beside it. 
The lethargy of these young fulmars is very notice- 
able. They do occasionally rise a little on their feet 
and shuffle about in the place where they sit, so that 
in this way they may, in time, turn quite round. 
