UTAMANIA TORDA I RAZOR-BILLED AUK. 4OI 



9 



Island Sound appears to be about the normal southward 

 limit of distribution of the species, and it is not common 

 there, though doubtless occurring each winter. On the 

 coast of Maine the bird occurs also in summer, being 

 therefore resident in some localities, as the islands in 

 the Bay of Fundy, where it breeds, though in nothing like 

 the numbers found farther north. The single egg is 

 deposited on the bare rock of sea-girt cliffs ; it measures 

 about 3.00X2.00, and is white or whitish, streaked, 

 spotted, and blotched with dark-brown. The egg re- 

 sembles those Murre's eggs, the ground color of which 

 is whitish, but is less pointedly pyriform, and the mark- 

 ings are rather in spots than in zigzags. 



Respecting the Great Auk, Alca impennis, it is only 

 necessary to refer to the fact that it has for many years 

 been wholly extinct, though formerly abundant at least 

 as far south as Massachusetts, where its bones in kitchen- 

 middings still attest its presence in years gone by. It 

 is perhaps the only bird of New England which no one 

 could criticize Dr. Brewer for expunging from the list, 

 had he been inclined to follow Nature in so doing. 



