THE BLACK GUILLEMOT. 293 



moved southward to meet them. These hints may not meet 

 the argument upon the anomaly, but they may, perhaps, lead 

 to the data by which the question, which is certainly a curi- 

 ous one, may be decided. 



Guillemots breed upon the cliffy parts of all our shores. 

 They cannot be said to nestle, for they construct not even 

 the rudiment of a nest. The female deposits her one egg 

 upon the ledge or in the hole of a rock, sits very closely upon 

 it, and is in general fed by the male. The egg is large, and 

 beautifully marked with a variety of colours ; but these 

 colours are seldom the same in any two eggs. The birds rise 

 with reluctance ; and if, when a number of them are sitting, 

 (for they are social in the breeding time,) they be forced 

 up by any alarm, many of the eggs tumble down and are 

 broken. 



THE BLACK GUILLEMOT (Vria grylle). 



This is a smaller bird than the former, and it displays, to 

 a greater extent, the change to a less deeply-tinted plumage, 

 which the birds that winter in the north undergo in that 

 rigorous climate. It is proportionably thicker and shorter 

 in the body ; but the neck and bill are more produced and 

 slender. The length is about fourteen inches, the breadth 

 twenty-two, and the weight fourteen ounces. When in the 

 summer plumage, the whole colour is brownish black, less 

 intense upon the wings than the other parts, and having a 

 large patch of white on the coverts. The bill, which is an 

 inch and a half long, slender, and without any notch in the 

 upper mandible, is black ; the inside of the gape reddish 

 orange ; the feet vermilion ; the irides hazel. 



In winter, the plumage depends something upon the lati- 

 tude. Those that remain on the northern shores of Britain, 

 are white on the under part, and mottled with black and 

 white on the upper ; but in the higher latitudes they become 



