210 THE BIRD WATCHER 
waiting for the chick#€o wake up. He, it will be re- 
membered, was the plain bird ; and such are very 
greatly in the majority. The white mark round the 
eye impairs this look of intelligence. It is lost in 
strangeness, and the bird so adorned has something 
the appearance of one of those queer kind of demons 
that one sees in Japanese drawings. The eye itself is 
black. 
The chick, therefore, has had two good fish—one a 
particularly large one—within twenty minutes. There 
is now an interval of near three hours, and then the 
father flies in again with yet another fish—a very 
long sand-eel it looks like, even bigger than the last— 
and the chick seizing it as it is let drop, before it 
touches the ledge, it disappears by a process which 
looks like magic. They are like little bag-purses, 
these guillemot chicks, and when they are full of 
money—1.e. fishes—it is difficult to think that there is 
room for anything more inside them—anatomy seems 
out of the question. Just before this, this particular 
one has lain in the queerest way under his mother’s 
wing, flat upon the rock, with his legs stretched 
straight out behind him as one sometimes sees dogs 
lie. He has lain like this several times altogether, 
but never for long ata time. Now, after his surfeit, 
he has retired again. By the way, the inside of the 
little chick’s mouth is pinky-flesh-coloured merely, 
whereas that of the old bird is of a fine lemon. 
Why should we, in so many species, find this difference 
in coloration between young and old in such a region 
