IN THE SHETLANDS 141 
I cannot, and cannot but remember this, though | 
am so altruistic that I keep on imagining myself to 
be them. Now I see the chick that I thought had 
gone, making the fourth again, in all. It must have 
moved some distance, to get to where it is. And now 
comes the Shetland rain. 
This was a sharp shower, and by being driven to take 
refuge I have found a better place. I now look down 
upon the same slab of rock, not thirty feet below me, 
that I watched before across a gulf. Seven grown 
guillemots are full in view, and, now and then, two of 
the chicks. In these I notice that the black of the 
upper surface is beginning to encroach upon the white 
of the throat, which, a day or two back, extended to 
the beak, being continuous with the breast and belly. 
Now a little collar of black is pushing round from 
both sides under the chin, and trying to meet, thinly 
and faintly, in the centre. The colouring of the adult 
bird, therefore, in which the neck and throat are 
dark like the body, is in process of establishing itself. 
Each of these two chicks is guarded by a parent 
bird, who stands between it and the sea; but one of 
them more relentlessly so than the other. Another 
parent, who may pass for the mother, stands a little 
behind one of them, and stretches out a wing. The 
little one, snuggling up to her, presses its little head 
amongst the feathers of her side, just under this wing. 
The mother immediately clasps him with it, and, with 
half of him thus concealed, he squats down on the 
rock and evidently goes to sleep. And so close and 
