LI1TLE AUK. 225 



peculiar circumstances. Instances are recorded of 

 specimens being procured on various parts of the 

 English coasts, and also on those of Ireland, Mr. 

 Thompson suspecting that it may breed in the 

 same locality with Brunnich's Guillemot; but one 

 or two remarkable instances are mentioned by Mr. 

 Yarrell, on the authority of Dr. Clarke of Hartle- 

 pool, where flocks of hundreds were driven upon 

 the coast, by a violent storm from N.N.E., and 

 where five or six were sometimes killed at a shot. 

 A similar circumstance happened on the Yorkshire 

 coast; and on the cessation of the gale, they again 

 disappeared. On the southern Scottish coasts, spe- 

 cimens have been very seldom procured, but it is seen 

 sparingly on the northern islands. Dunn says it ap- 

 pears regularly in Shetland every winter, though he 

 had not heard of it visiting Orkney ; stretching stil j . 

 northward, its proper resorts are the vicinity on both 

 sides of the arctic circle, in some parts appearing 

 in great abundance, according to Captain abine, 

 even " supplying the ship's company with a variation 

 of food ;"* and Capt. Beechy, in his account of the 

 voyage to the North Pole, in 1815, under command 

 of Capt. Duncan, in the Dorothea and Trent, while 

 describing the scenery of Magdalena Bay, a deep 

 commodious inlet on the western side of Spitzbergen, 

 writes, " At the head of the bay there is a high 

 pyramidal mountain of granite, termed Rotge Hill, 

 from the myriads of small birds of that name that fre- 

 * Birds of Greenland, page 46. 

 P 



