THE LITTLE AUK. 127 



a hundred birds caught in this manner in a very short 

 time. 



In his <e Memoir on the Birds of Greenland " Colonel 

 Sabine has some interesting observations about this 

 bird; he says, "This species was abundant in Baffin's 

 Bay and Davis Straits; and in latitude 76 was so nu- 

 merous in the channels of water separating fields of ice that 

 many hundreds were killed daily, and the ship's company 

 supplied with them. The whole of the birds in the breed- 

 ing season, the sexes being alike, had the under part of the 

 neck a uniform sooty-black, terminating abruptly and in 

 an even line against the white of the belly ; the young 

 birds, which we saw in all stages from the egg, as soon as 

 they were feathered, were marked exactly as the mature 

 birds ; but in the third week in September, when we were 

 on our passage down the American coast, every specimen, 

 whether old or young, was observed to be in change; 

 and in the course of a few days the entire feathers of the 

 throat and cheeks and of the under part of the neck had 

 become white/' 



In the adult bird the beak is black ; shorter than the 

 head, and thick and broad at the base; the nostrils are 

 partly covered with small feathers ; the irides hazel, with a 

 small white spot over the eye ; the head, hind part of neck, 

 back, wings, and tail black, but the ends of the secondaries 

 and the sides of the tertials are margined with white ; the 

 colour of the chin, throat, and neck in front depend on the 

 season, being black in summer and white in winter, but 

 mottled with black and white in the spring and autumn ; 

 the under surface of the body white ; legs and toes yellowish- 

 brown, the membranes between the toes darker brown. 

 The wings and tail are short, and the legs have a very 



