304 
POPULAR HISTORY OF BIRDS. 
for a few weeks after being shot ; indeed it is not uncom- 
mon to use them after they have been three months hanging 
to the booms around the ship^s quarter"^/^ This interest- 
ing little bird is about the size of a pigeon^ and is indeed 
often called by the sailors Greenland Dove;^^ and it has 
been named also melaleucos, from its colour^ being black 
above and white below. The bill is rather short, and is 
without notch at the end ; at the base, as in the guillemots, 
it is closely muffled up with feathers. On August 17, 1850^ 
Dr. Sutherland remarks, in his ^ JournaF (vol. i. p. 262), 
that the rotches at that season had the head and upper part 
of the gullet, or floor of the mouth, apparently much en- 
larged, and quite out of proportion to so small a bird. He 
says that, as the breeding season advances, the skin and 
thin muscular layer beneath and on both sides of the tongue 
are distended into something in the form of a pouch, which 
will be found crammed full of their ordinary food [Gam- 
mams arcticus and other allied Crustacea), which they bear 
off to their young. I have chased them with a boat, fright- 
ened, and shot them, without succeeding in making them 
disgorge the precious contents of these wonderfully capa- 
* Journal of a Voyage in Baffin's Bay and Barrow's Straits, in 1850, 1851, 
vol. i. p. 220. 
