456 ALCAILE. 



term being thus rendered necessary, Colonel Sabine very 

 properly devoted this Guillemot to the memory of Brun- 

 nich by name, and some interesting remarks on the early 

 history of this species will be found in Colonel Sabine's 

 " Memoir of the Birds of Greenland,' 1 published in the 12th 

 volume of the Transactions of the Linnean Society. 



Brunnieh's Guillemot is at once distinguished, at any 

 season of the year, from our Common Guillemot, by the 

 shortness, the stoutness, angularity, and greater depth of 

 its bill ; and our present subject has been called the Thick- 

 billed Guillemot in reference to this peculiarity. 



Mr. W. Thompson of Belfast, in his published Report on 

 the Vertebrata of Ireland, mentions that the Uria Brun- 

 nicMi is noticed by Colonel Sabine as seen by him in the 

 month of July on the coast of Kerry, where it may be pre- 

 sumed to breed. Captain James C. Boss, in his last 

 Natural History appendix, published in 1835, says he met 

 with this species at Unst, the most northern of the Shet- 

 land Islands, and in several parts of Scotland ; and Pro- 

 fessor Macgillivray refers, in the second volume of his 

 Manual, to a specimen now preserved in the Edinburgh 

 University, which was received with other skins from 

 Orkney. 



Professor Nilsson includes this species in his Fauna of 

 Scandinavia, and considers it the Alca pica of Fabricius ; 

 it is found also at the Faroe Islands and Iceland, at Spitz- 

 bergen, Greenland, Davis 1 Straits, Baffin's Bay, and the 

 Arctic Seas. Southward in Europe, one example, a young 

 bird, according to M. Temminck, has been killed in the 

 vicinity of Naples, and is there preserved. 



In its habits and food, as far as known, Brunnich's 

 Guillemot does not differ from the Common Guillemot, and 

 I am not aware of distinctions in the eggs, if any exist. 



