BLACK GUILLEMOT. 149 



Auk, they do not confine themselves to any particular spot, but take up 

 their abode for the season in any place that presents suitable conve- 

 niences. Wherever there are fissures in the rocks, or great piles of blocks 

 with holes in their interstices, there you may expect to find the Black 

 Guillemot. 



Whether European writers have spoken of this species at random, or 

 after due observation, I cannot say. All I know is, that every one of them 

 whose writings I have consulted, says that the Black Guillemot lays on- 

 ly one egg. As 1 have no reason whatever to doubt their assertion, I 

 might be tempted to suppose that our species diiFers from theirs, were I 

 not perfectly aware that birds in different places will construct different 

 nests, and lay more or fewer eggs. Our species always deposits three, 

 unless it may have been disturbed ; and this fact I have assured myself 

 of by having caught the birds in more than twenty instances sitting 

 on that number. Nay, on several occasions, at Labrador, some of my 

 party and myself saw several Black Guillemots sitting on eggs in the 

 same fissure of a rock, where every bird had three eggs under it, a 

 fact which I communicated to my friend Thomas Nuttall. What 

 was most surprising to me was, that even the fishermen there thought 

 that this bird laid only a single egg ; and when I asked them how 

 they knew, they simply and good-naturedly answered that they had 

 heard so. Thus, Reader, I might have been satisfied with the say- 

 ings of others, and repeated that the bird in question lays one egg ; 

 but instead of taking this easy Avay of settling the matter, I found it ne- 

 cessary to convince myself of the fact by my own observation. I had 

 therefore to receive many knocks and bruises in scrambling over rugged 

 crags and desolate headlands ; whereas, with less incredulity, I might very 

 easily have announced to you from my easy chair in Edinburgh, that the 

 Black Guillemots of America lay only a single egg. No true student of 

 nature ought ever to be satisfied without personal observation when it 

 can be obtained. It is the " American Woodsman"" that tells you so, 

 anxious as he is that you should enjoy the pleasure of studying and ad- 

 miring the beautiful works of Nature. 



To satisfy yourself as to the correctness of the statements which he 

 here lays before you, go to the desolate shores of Labrador, There, in 

 the vernal month of June, place yourself on some granite rock, against 

 the base of which the waves dash in impotent rage ; and ere long you 

 will see the gay Guillemot coming from afar by the side of its mate. 



