504 THE ZOOLOGIST. 



longer than it is deep. I think only a few young were hatched ; 

 I saw no old birds carrying fish. The nests I examined consisted 

 of a small quantity of grass-roots and dead grass — never more 

 than a little, and in some cases hardly any. Accounts given of a 

 Puffin's bite differ. They bite hard, and can draw blood from 

 the soft parts of the fingers if they nip up a small piece of flesh ; 

 otherwise the bite is merely painful, though it is said that if you 

 snatch you hand away the flesh is sometimes torn. Puffins can 

 scratch also. They are ferocious fighters ; I saw two fighting at 

 the mouth of a burrow, and they only left off when I came close 

 to them. A keen observer told me he had seen them grapple with 

 one another, and roll over and over down the slope until they 

 fell over the low cliff and into the sea, still hanging on like 

 bull-dogs. 



Guillemots breed at Oilan, on St. Tudwal's, and, as Mr. 

 Coward tells me, near Nevin. Of thirty eggs which had been 

 taken at Cilan for food, the dark green type, heavily marked 

 with black, outnumbered all other varieties by five to one. At 

 St. Tudwal's, too, this variety prevailed. The Guillemots, 

 sitting upright on the ledges, had to be pelted with small stones 

 in some cases before they would leave their eggs, and even then 

 they shuffled the eggs carefully from under them, leaving the big 

 end next to the wall, before dropping off the ledges. They dis- 

 like leaving the eggs for fear of being robbed by the Gulls ; and, 

 sure enough, a Lesser Black-back appeared on the scene almost 

 at once, speering about the cliff. Two birds sitting on eggs only 

 a foot apart were very interesting, for one was of the ordinary 

 type, and the other a well-marked example of the Ringed 

 Guillemot (as brown, though, as its neighbour). When at last I 

 induced them to leave their eggs, I saw that both these had a 

 green ground colour, marked with black. 



Rock birds, I think, of all three species inhabit one or two 

 small islands off the westernmost part of Lleyn. I hope to visit 

 them next spring. Gulls breed there too, which is not surprising, 

 as the Welsh names signify Great and Little Gull Island. Some 

 Razorbills breed with the Guillemots about the great cliffs about 

 Trwyn Careg y tir and Mynydd Cilan. From above, the birds 

 on the sea were only just visible to the naked eye ; yet the cry, 

 like that of an angry barn-door cock, came up fairly loud at 



