IN THE SHETLANDS 245 
settling. The soil, too, is honeycombed with their 
burrows, and in each of these, as well as in the nooks 
and chambers of rocks that lie closely together, there 
is a young fluffy black puffin, which increases the 
population by about a third, to say nothing of 
those parent birds which may also be underground. 
A million of puffins, I should think, must be standing, 
flying, or swimming in the more or less immediate 
vicinity ; the air, especially, if it be a sunny day—or, 
rather, for a sunny minute or so—is like one great 
sunbeam full of little dancing bird-motes. On the 
shore they stand together in friendly groups and 
clusters, and leave it for those much larger gatherings 
where they ride, hundreds together, ducking and 
bobbing on the light waves like a fleet of little 
painted boats, each one with a highly ornamental bird- 
or, rather, puffin-headed prow. Thus their duties 
are carried on under the mantle of social pleasure; it 
is all a coming and going between a land-party and 
a sea-party, so that the domestic life of these birds 
would be a type and pattern of feminine happiness if 
only they were a little—by which I mean vastly—more 
noisy. Puffins indeed are somewhat silent birds—at 
least they have been so during the time I have seen 
them—from the middle of June, that is to say, till 
the middle of August—though as they can and do 
utter with effect, on occasions, they are, perhaps, more 
vociferous at an earlier period, before domestic matters 
have become so far advanced. Not that amidst such 
a huge number of them, their note—which I have 
