Auks, Murres, Puffins 



dovekie to be issued to the hunters who can barely walk," writes 

 the starving commander; "but . . . one man begged with tears 

 for his twelfth, which was given him with everybody's contempt." 

 When the twelfth part of a little bird that a man can easily cover 

 with his hand causes a scene like this, can the imagination picture 

 the harrowing misery of the actual situation ? 



And yet where man and nearly every other living creature 

 perishes, the little auk pursues its happy way, floating about in 

 the open water, left even in that Arctic desolation by the drifting 

 ice floes, and diving into its icy depths after the shrimps that 

 Greely's party collected at such frightful cost. 



Far within the Arctic Circle great colonies nest after the 

 fashion of their tribe, in the jutting cliffs that overhang the sea. 

 One pale, bluish-white egg, laid on the bare rock, is all that nature 

 requires of these birds to carry on the species, whose chief pro- 

 tection lies in their being able to live beyond the reach of men, to 

 escape pursuit by diving and rapid swimming under water, and 

 to fly in the teeth of a gale that would mean death to a puffin. 

 With so many means of self-preservation at their disposal, there 

 is no need of a large family to keep up the balance that nature 

 adjusts. 



These neat little birds, whose form alone suggests a dove, 

 are by no means the lackadaisical creatures their name seems to 

 imply. They are self-reliant, for they are chiefly solitary birds 

 that straggle down our coast in winter. They are wonderfully 

 quick of motion in their chosen element, and although they have 

 a peculiar fashion of splashing along the surface of the water, as 

 if unable to fly, they certainly are in no immediate danger of be- 

 coming extinct from the loss of wings through disuse, like the 

 great auk. A little sea dove that once flew across the bow of 

 an ocean steamer in the North Atlantic in an instant became a 

 mere speck in the bleak wintry sky, and the next second van- 

 ished utterly. 



26 



