The Horn-billed Puffin 



Each tunnel has a spur or blind alley which, presumably, is occupied by 

 the male during the honeymoon. For lining, the nuptial chamber boasts 

 nothing more pretentious than a few dead salal leaves and a handful of 

 dried grasses. 



When the single egg is laid the male bird leaves his mate and forages 

 at sea, accomplishing to this end almost incredible journeys — sixty miles, 

 say — to get to a favorite feeding ground, and as much to return, after 

 nightfall, laden with sand launces, or their partially digested equivalent. 

 There is a noisy exchange between partners at ten p.m., and another just 

 before daybreak, but whether the female invariably takes the night shift 

 at sea, or whether there is a fairer division, turn and turn about, we do 

 not yet know. A Horn-bill hen, discovered upon her nest, has all the de- 

 fiant virtue of her sex and calling. The one figured on p. 1521 was sitting on 

 nothing at all, not even a clam-shell; but neither is that original with the 

 Rhino. She is quite ready to peck, too, and a glove is to be recommended 

 for these psychological studies. When given her freedom, the Horn-bill in- 

 variably pitches headlong down the declivity, barely clearing the vegeta- 

 tion, until she reaches the level of the water, whereupon she flies away with 

 a swift, even stroke, about a foot above the surface, until lost to sight. 



In June the chick hatches, a child of night; and he is appropriately 

 clad in a suit of slaty black down. He has no desire to see the light, least 

 of all as prepared for him by pick and shovel. He feels quite ill at ease 

 when exposed, and spends his entire time shifting about restlessly in the 

 end of a burrow remaining to him, and searching in his soul why he may 

 not find greater privacy. 



The children of the night-shift are all alike in this, that they love dark- 

 ness rather than light. That this was not always true of the Horn-billed 

 Puffin we have curious evidence in the coloring of the egg. Viewed in the 

 large, the purpose of pigmentation is protective. The egg of the gull, ex- 

 posed to the full glare of day, is dark-colored and so splashed and blotched 

 with brownish blacks that it blends in admirably with its surroundings of 

 dead grasses and dun rocks, and is thus lost to hostile view. But when a 

 species begins to forsake the open and there is no longer need of heavy pig- 

 mentation, the egg tends to revert to primitive white; that is, to unpig- 

 mented calcium carbonate. Now in the case of the Horn-billed Puffin's 

 egg, as in that of all other Puffins, we find traces of an ancient color-pat- 

 tern, undoubtedly heavy, still persisting in faint lines of umber and in 

 subdued shell-markings or under-tints of lavender and lilac. These to the 

 oologist are eloquent of a time ages ago before the race went moon-mad. 



1524 



