88 Recent Literature. 



regularly convex ; the eyelids are vermilion red, and furnished with two 

 horny plates, and there is a large yellow rosette at the angle of the mouth. 

 The young are reared by the middle of July, and by tlie end of this 

 month, or early in August, the birds go to sea ; after which not one is to * 

 be seen on the rocks so lately full of life. Autumn advances ; the Puf- 

 fins are scattered over the waters, and a blank in their history ensues. 

 But soon the wintry winds grow violent, and after some storm, hundreds 

 of Puffins are washed ashore, dead or dying of inanition. These victims 

 are mainly young birds ; but adults share the same fate if the storm 

 occurs during the moult, when the loss of the quills reduces the wings to 

 mere stumps. Three times in the winter of 1873, after storms, M. Mar- 

 mottan found thousands of dead Puffins rolling in the sand. Willugliby 

 and Baillou have recorded similar observations. The Puffins which are 

 thus washed on the French coast in winter are emaciated to the last 

 degree, and are different in plumage from those we kill in the breeding 

 season. The orbital region is more or less blackish ; there is no red ring 

 round the eyes, nor horny plates on the lids, nor rosette at the angle of 

 the mouth. Still more curiously the hill itself is differently formed ; it has 

 neither the same size nor shape nor color ; the horny covering even is 

 not the same. The bill is small, without any boss at the base, and fur- 

 nished opposite the nostrils with a soft grayish skin instead of a solid and 

 bluish horny plate. Authors considered such Puffins as the young, until 

 M. Vian, recognizing adults among them, described them as a new spe- 

 cies, Mormon grabce (Bull, de la Soc. Zool. de France, l"'^ annee, 1876, 

 p. 4). Neither one nor the other of these conclusions is admissible. The 

 first supposition, of immaturity, falls before the facts the author presents ; 

 in view of which, Vian himself has abandoned his position. 



The author devotes a couple of pages to the steps of the investigation by 

 which he was led to discover the metamorphosis he had already suspected, 

 being at length rewarded with actual witness of the transformation. He 

 continues : The covering of the bill of these birds, which in spring forms 

 a solid homogeneous horny sheath, loosened and fell a^Mvt like the pieces of 

 a coat of mail; the rosette at the angle of the movith shrivelled and grew 

 pale ; the horny plates about the eye had fallen in some specimens and 

 were loosened in others ; the red feet became yellow ; and finally the 

 change of plumage began in some specimens. In a word, the adult Lar- 

 ventauscher * grew under his eyes into what some have considered as the 

 young of Mormon arctica, and into what has been called M. grabce. 



* Brehm (Handb. der Naturg. Vog. Deutschl.) once calls the Puffin Larven- 

 tatischer, elsewhere invariably writing Xrtrrcjitoi<c7tc?\ If the first ortliogiaphy 

 is correct, we may conclude that the moult of the bill was known to the fisher- 

 men of the Baltic long before M. Bureau discovered it. For der Larventausdier 

 is, in effect, der Kegel der seine Larve tauscht, I'oiseau qui change son masque, 

 the bird that unmasks. As to der Larvcntanch-er, it properly signifies der Tail,- 



