66 A bout the Feathered Folk. 



urge them to go and look at the 

 puffins in the Hebrides. But Regent's 

 Park is within the reach of so many 

 people, and but few indeed can 

 reach the far-away cliffs where our 

 wild-fowl breed. 



Not so very long ago there was a 

 colony of Puffins " sea-parrots," as 

 the people call them at Flam- 

 borough Head, but the persecutions 

 of the fowlers seeking for eggs, and 

 the thoughtless cruelty of " sports- 

 men," who shot them down without 

 mercy, have driven them away. The 

 sailors used to say they were the 

 "Flamborough Pilots," and they 

 declared that, in the nights when 

 the mists hid the warning beacon 

 fires, many a ship was saved from 

 destruction by the cries of the bird- 

 colony, which proclaimed to the 

 anxious steersman how close he had 

 come to the dangerous coast. 



And now the cliffs are silent, 

 and the ships are wrecked ! 



