SPirZBEKtJKN AND GREE>fLAND. 65 



old ones arc not present, and sometimes when they are also, 

 for they are not able to resist them. 



They love their young ones so well, that they will be 

 killed before they will leave them (and will defend them as 

 a hen doth her chickens, swimming about them) ; at other 

 times they are very hard to be shot ; for as soon as they see 

 the fire, they are immediately under water or fly away. They 

 fly in great flocks, with pointed wings like swallows, and 

 move their wings much in their flight. One can hardly 

 know the young lumhs from the old ones at the first sight, 

 if you do not take exact notice of their bills ; for the upper 

 part turns beside the under part at the point, and the under- 

 most beside the uppermost, as you see in the Cross-bill ; yet 

 not so much in these ; and it is commonly done in the fif- 

 teenth, sixteenth, to the twentieth year of their age. The 

 old ones are full of flesh, but it is very dry and tough, and 

 therefore unpleasant to eat. 



They boil them like the pigeons, and scum off the fat when 

 they boil, then they fry them in batter. I did not see them 

 upon the ice, but abundance of them upon the mountains : 

 they go waddling from one side to the other, like the diving 

 pigeons. I have seen many thousands of them together in 

 the Danish harbour, on the mountains, on that side where 

 the east and northern winds could not blow hard or not fully 

 upon them (and so do all other birds chuse such places on 

 the mountains for their habitations), where the herbs do grow. 



But I saw not so many by the haven of Magdalen, where I 

 drew my figure on the 25th of July. Afterwards I saw some 

 of them in the Spanish and Noi^th Sea, not far from the Heilg- 

 land. 



4. Of the Mew called Kutge-gehef} 



This is a beautiful metv, and is called kutge-gehef because 

 it crycth so. He hath a bill somewhat bent, as the Burger - 



^ The Kittiwake gull (Rissn tridactyla). 



« Y 



