514 Alcadcc. 



come into his hands, one on October 26, 1869, from Gore Cross 

 Farm, on the Market Lavington Down, and the second on 

 October 17, 1870, which was taken on Wilsford Down. 



215. PUFFIN (Fratercula arctica). 



Most marvellous, indeed, is the appearance of this bird, and 

 even ludicrous its aspect, on account of the singular form and 

 colour of the bill, which is higher than long, very much com- 

 pressed at the sides, both mandibles arched and grooved and 

 notched towards the point, and very highly coloured with the 

 brightest orange and yellow and bluish -gray. Singular, however, 

 as it is to look at, this beak is extremely powerful, and can bite 

 the intruding hand thrust into a hole in search of its egg in a 

 way not readily forgotten. And now it has been discovered 

 that the Puffin sheds portions of its bill in autumn, the horny 

 frontal sheath scaling off in pieces like plates of armour.* This 

 species is truly oceanic in its habits, and never resorts to fresh 

 water. It breeds in a rabbit burrow or other hole in the ground, 

 and lays but one egg. Unlike the young of the Guillemot, 

 which its parents convey at a tender age from the giddy heights 

 on which it is hatched to the sea below, the young Puffin 

 remains at the end of the rabbit-burrow or hole in the rock in 

 which it is bred until it is able to fly down to the sea, unaided 

 by its parents. Once on the sea, it finds itself thoroughly at 

 home, for it dives with the utmost facility. Its flight, too, for a 

 short distance is rapid, but cannot be continued far, for its short 

 narrow wings seem scarcely able to support its heavy bod}^. It 

 is strange that this bird, which penetrates as far as Greenland 

 and other high latitudes in the breeding season, should be so 

 little known in Sweden that it is called by the fisherman 

 UtldndsTc Alk, or ' Foreign Razor Bill.' Off the northern coast 

 of Norway, however, it is exceedingly abundant, and in one 

 island named Fugle-0, or 'Bird Island/ its numbers are in" 

 calculable. The same may be said of the slopes of Lundy, or 

 * Puffin ' Island, deriving its name from the Scandinavian word 

 Fourth edition of c Yarrell's British Birds,' vol. iv., p. 95. 



