32 LUNDY ISLAND. 



on which lay one young chick and one egg. The 

 latter was larger than a hen's egg, of a dark greenish 

 hue with black spots ; it was on the point of hatching, 

 for I distinctly heard the feeble piping of the impa- 

 tient chick within, whose beak had already begun to 

 chip the shell. The hatched young one, a tiny crea- 

 ture, covered with pale-brown down, lay quite still 

 with shut eyes, which it opened for a moment when 

 touched, to close them again in stoical indifference. 



Presently we came upon another nest, containing 

 one young rather more advanced ; its clothing of down 

 prettily spotted with dark-brown. Then another 

 with two eggs of a dirty white, mottled and splashed 

 with brown, which was conjectured to belong to the 

 glaucous gull, a powerful and handsome bird seen 

 hovering about, of snowy-white plumage, except the 

 back and wings, which are of a delicately-pale bluish- 

 gray. 



The whole atmosphere was redolent with the strong 

 pungent odour of guano, which, as everybody knows, 

 is the excrement of fish-eating birds, collected from 

 the rocks on which they breed, where it has accumu- 

 lated for ages. The same substance was splashed 

 upon the stones and earth wherever we looked ; we 

 saw it falling through the air ; our clothes were spotted 

 as if with whitewash ; and we scarcely dared to gaze 

 upwards on the circling flocks, lest our eyes should 

 suffer the misfortune of Tobit. 



It is to the puffins that the burrows with which the 

 soft vegetable earth is honeycombed are chiefly attri- 



