The Wintry Shore. 193 



have been brought up at one time in the meshes of a 

 single net. 



The prim figure of the puffin, with its quaint, up- 

 right attitude and curious red bill, is not a familiar 

 object in winter. The bird is found throughout the 

 year on some parts of the coast ; but when we read 

 that the Scilly Islands were held in the fourteenth 

 century under the King as Earl of Cornwall by an 

 annual payment of three hundred puffins at Michael- 

 mas, we are forced to think that the birds must have 

 been pickled. 



The guillemot and the razorbill, also, though not 

 unknown in the winter, are much more numerous in 

 the summer months. 



An egg of a kindred species to the razorbill, the 

 great auk or gairfowl, was sold by auction in London 

 lately for no less a sum than 22%. These remark- 

 able birds, so helpless on the shore that in their 

 ancient haunts sailors were accustomed to drive them 

 by scores along a plank into a boat > yet so dexterous 

 in the water that a six-oared galley has followed them 

 in vain, must now be reckoned among the things that 

 were. A hundred years ago they were already be- 

 coming scarce. It is more than twice that time since 

 they were common on the coast of Greenland, on 

 islands near Newfoundland, and around the shores of 

 Iceland, where the last birds seen alive were captured 

 in 1844. 



Three specimens only are all that are known with 



13 



