Food. 
General 
descrip- 
tion. 
Male Bird. 
Young. 
442 NATATORES. FRATERCULA. PUFFIN. 
great distance at once, being obliged to exert its short and 
narrow wings to their utmost power for the support of its 
body, which is heavy in proportion to its dimensions. It 
feeds principally upon young sprats, though other small fish 
and crustacez are occasionally devoured. In diving it dis- 
plays equal expertness with the others of the present family. 
It is a bird of neat appearance, and its bill, though large, is 
richly coloured, and contrasts well with the black and white 
of its plumage *. From the shape of the bill, and correspond- 
ing bulk of the head, it seems to have obtained the greater 
part of the provincial synonyms above quoted. 
Puate 83.* Fig. 1. Represents an old male bird of the na- 
tural size. 
Crown of the head, upper parts of the body, and collar 
round the neck, glossy black. Cheeks and throat pear!- 
grey, darkest towards the base of the lower mandible. 
Under plumage pure white. Legs orange-red. Bill 
one inch and a half in depth, bluish-grey at the base, 
the middle part orange-red, and the tip bright red ; the 
upper mandible having three, and the lower one two, 
distinct furrows. The horny appendages to the eyelids 
pearl-grey ; that upon the upper lid triangular, on the 
lower lid oblong. 
Fig. 2. Is supposed to be a bird of a year old. 
Bill scarcely one inch in depth, and with the furrows not 
so distinctly marked as in Fig. 1. Two in this state, 
exactly alike as to their bills and legs, were killed near 
the Fern Islands in June 1827. 
Fig. 3. Is the young bird of a week old, covered with a long 
sooty black down. 
* White varieties occasionally occur. Mr Neri informs me, that he 
lately saw one alive in the possession of a gentleman who had obtained it 
when young the preceding year, with only two or three black feathers up- 
on the back, the rest of the plumage being pure white. 
