472 ALCAD.E. 



and young fish. I have seen old birds when they had a 

 young one to feed, returning to the rocks with several 

 small fish hanging by the head from the angle of the gape 

 of the mouth. Mr. John Macgillivray says that at St. 

 Kilda many Puffins are taken when sitting on the rocks, 

 by means of a noose of horse-hair attached to a slender 

 rod of bamboo-cane. This mode is most successful in 

 wet weather, as the Puffins then sit best upon the rocks, 

 allowing a person to approach within a few yards, and as 

 many as three hundred may be taken in the coarse of one 

 day by an expert bird-catcher. They are caught for their 

 feathers. 



The Puffin visits various parts of Scandinavia, the Faroe 

 Islands, and Iceland ; it has been found as far as Nova 

 Zembla, and other high northern latitudes. East of this 

 country it is taken on the coasts of Holland and France. 

 A single specimen is recorded to have been taken at Genoa 

 in the winter of 1823, and M. Savi includes it in his his- 

 tory of the Birds of Italy. An example of this species 

 wanders occasionally, as if by accident, to Sicily and 

 Malta. 



The beak has the basal ridge yellow, the space in ad- 

 vance of the base bluish-grey, with three grooves and four 

 ridges of orange ; the naked skin at the gape is yellow ; 

 the irides grey, eyelids orange ; lore, chin, cheeks, and 

 ear-coverts white ; forehead, crown, occiput, a collar round 

 the neck, all the back, wings, and tail black, the wing- 

 primaries rather the lightest in colour ; all the under sur- 

 face of the body white ; legs, toes, and their membranes 

 orange ; the whole length twelve inches, of the wing six 

 inches. Both sexes alike in plumage. Varieties in colour 

 have been known to occur. 



