THE BIRD-BERGS OF LAPLAND. 59 



place. As soon as this has been done the female lays, on the bare 

 ground at the further end of the hollowed-out brooding-chamber, a 

 single very large, top-shaped, brightly-spotted egg, and begins to 

 brood alternately with the male. The poor bachelors have a sad 

 time of it now. They, too, would dearly like to take parental cares 

 upon themselves if they could only find a mate who would share 

 them. But all the females are appropriated, and wooing is in vain. 

 So they resolve to give practical proof of their good-will, at least in 

 so far that they force themselves on the fortunate pair as friends of 

 the family. In the hours about midnight, when the female broods 

 on the nest, they sit with the male as he keeps watch before it, and, 

 when the male relieves his mate that she may fish in the sea, they 

 mount guard in his steai But when both parents visit the sea at 

 once the bachelors hasten to reap some reward for their faithfulness. 

 Without delay they thrust themselves into the interior of the cavity, 

 and sit for the time upon the forsaken egg. The poor birds who 

 are condemned to celibacy want at least to brood a little! This 

 unselfish devotion has one result for which men might envy the 

 auks — there are no orphans on these bird-bergs. Should the male 

 of a pair come to grief, his widow immediately consoles herself with 

 another mate, and in the rarer case of both parents losing their lives 

 at once the good-natured supernumeraries are quite ready to finish 

 hatching the egg and to rear the young one. The young ones differ 

 materially from those of the ducks and gulls. They are ' altrices ', 

 not 'praecoces' as the ornithologists say;^ in plain language, they are 

 not ready for active life as soon as they are hatched. In a dress of 

 thick gray down the young auk slips from the egg in which it 

 awakes to life, but it must spend many weeks in the hole before it 

 is ready to attempt its first flight to the sea. This first flight is 

 always a hazardous undertaking, as is proved by the countless dead 

 bodies on the cliffs at the foot of the berg. The young bird, ner- 

 vously using its unpractised legs, hardly less timidly its newly- 

 developed wings, follows its parents as they lead the way down the 

 hill towards some place from which the leap into the sea may be 

 attempted with as little danger as possible. On a suitable ledge 

 the parents often remain a long time with their young one before 



