KITTIWAKE. 343 



is. One milliard Kittiwakes laid in a row, and touching one another, 

 would reach twenty times round the world ! But, in spite of all this tall 

 talk, the number is incredible. It is the custom to fire off a cannon 

 opposite the colony : peal after peal echoes and re-echoes from the cliffs, 

 every ledge appears to pour forth an endless stream of birds, and long 

 before the last echo has died away it is overpowered by the cries of the 

 birds, whilst the air in every direction exactly resembles a snowstorm, 

 but a snowstorm in a whirlwind. The birds fly in cohorts : those nearest 

 the ship are all flying in one direction, beyond them other cohorts are 

 flying in a different direction, and so on, until the extreme distance is 

 a confused mass of snowflakes. It looks as if the fjord was a huge 

 chaldron of air, in which the birds were floating, and as if the floating 

 mass was being stirred by an invisible rod. The seething mass of birds 

 made an indelible impression on my memory; it photographed itself 

 on my mind's eye, as such scenes often do. I tried to make a sketch 

 of it at the time, but I found it impossible to convey the idea of 

 motion. It reminded me of Gustav Dore's picture to illustrate the 

 passage in Dante's ' Inferno ' of " the punishment of sinners, who are 

 tossed about ceaselessly in the air by the most furious winds/' No less an 

 artist than Dore could do justice to such a scene. There is a much 

 smaller colony at Stappen, just beyond the North Cape, which made a 

 great impression upon me, until it was partially effaced by its still more 

 impressive rival. 



The Kittiwake's nest is better made than is usual with the Gulls. In 

 some districts the foundation is made of turf, with the soil adhering, 

 which the salt spray and wet feet of the birds soon turns into a kind of 

 mortar. This foundation is finished off into a nest made of seaweed, 

 pieces of marine vegetation, and finally lined with dry grass and some- 

 times a few feathers. The Kitti wake's nest is a very dirty structure 

 outside, and, with the adjoining cliff, is usually whitewashed with the 

 droppings of the birds. The nests are often placed very close together, 

 and almost every little jutting piece of rock is crowned with one. The 

 eggs of the Kittiwake are two or three in number, but in some cases four 

 are laid ; they vary in ground-colour from pale greenish blue and olive- 

 brown to pale buff and huffish brown, spotted and blotched with rich 

 reddish brown and with underlying markings of pale brown and grey. 

 On some eggs the spots are small and evenly distributed over the whole 

 surface, but on others the blotches are large and confluent and form an 

 irregular zone round the large end. Some specimens are very sparingly 

 marked with a few large blotches here and there. The underlying markings 

 are numerous, large, and very conspicuous, and on some eggs are the pre - 

 ponderating ones, the surface-spots being only represented by a few 

 indistinct blotches or dark-brown streaks. The eggs vary in length from 



