THE BIRDS OF lONA AND MULL. 257 



thing, also applicable to the confiding, plump, little round bird. The 

 Welsh call him casgan long — the sailor's hatred, from a notion that 

 their appearance forebodes a storm. Casg in draelic is to stop, and 

 long is a ship. 



The Little Auk. 

 Norwegian, Sjo kung — the sea king. 

 Seems quite unknown on our western shores. I never saw a speci- 

 men, though always on the look-out for it. 



The Razorbill Auk. 



Norwegian, Tord muUa. 

 The same remarks as those made on the common guillemot are 

 applicable to the razorbill, coming at the same season, breeding on 

 the same cliffs, and covering the same seas in a manner exactly similar 

 to them. Like the former, it also totally disappears with the termina- 

 tion of the breeding season. Specimens in winter plumage are only 

 rarely met with, and usually as weather-beaten, storm - stressed 

 stragglers, crippled or half-starved after severe tempests. They are 

 by no means silent birds ; their hoarse croaks are borne along the 

 smooth surface of the calm sea to a great distance, as they keep calling 

 to each other while fishing, and may be heard while the birds are too 

 far off to be discernible from a boat. Their cries are often to be heard 

 during calm, moonlight nights after the hatching is over in August, 

 and when each old bird is followed by a little one, which it seems to 

 be instructing in the art of diving. 



The Puffin. 



Gaelic, Seamas rua' (pronounced shame-us rua) — Red James. 



Norwegian, Lunne fogel. 



Is another of those summer visitors who pour out their thousands 

 upon our sea-girt shores, so beautifully alluded to by Thomson as 

 ' ' Where the Northern Ocean in vast whirls 

 Boils round the naked melancholy isles 

 Of furthest Thule, and the Atlantic surge 

 Pours in amongst the stormy Hebrides. 

 Who can recount what transmigrations there 

 Are annual made ? What nations come and go ? 

 And how the living clouds on clouds arise 

 Infinite wings ! Till all the plume dark air 

 And rude resounding shores are one wild cry." 



