ALCIDJE — PHALEBIDINJE: AUKS. 
807 
flanks sooty brownish-black, grayer below than above ; other under parts white ; lining of 
wings dark. Feet dull greenish or yellowish, darker behind and below. Length about 9.00; 
wing 5.40-5.75 ; tail 1.55; tarsus about 1.00; middle toe alone 1.10; chord of culmen or 
gonys 0.60 ; gape 1.00 ; depth of bill 0.45 ; width 0.30. Young : No white filamentous feath- 
ers on head ; a white spot on lower eyelid; upper 
parts as before, under parts white, marbled and 
mottled with dusky ends of the feathers. N. 
Paciiic and polar seas, highly arctic, apparently 
not coming much south. This quaintly-beaked 
bird resorts to cM's and crags to breed, laying its 
single egg deep in the cavities of the most inac- 
cessible rocks overhanging the sea ; it resembles 
a small narrow hen's egg, being white, variously 
soiled and discolored, minutely granular and rough 
to the touch, 2.25 to 2.35 long by 1.45 to 1.50. 
S. cristatel'lus. (Lat. cristatellus, dimin. of 
cristatus, crested. Figs. 540, 541, 542.) Crested 
Auk. Snub-nosed Auk. Bill fundamentally 
small and simple, compressed-conic, with convex 
culmen and little sinuate horizontal commissure ; 
but in the breeding season developing several 
corneous appendages, which alter its shape great- 
ly, make it singularly irregular, and modify even 
the outline of the feathers at its base. These 
accessory pieces are : a nasal plate, filling the 
nasal fossa, separate from its fellow of the oppo- 
site side ; a subnasal strip prolonged on the cutting 
edge of the upper mandibles backward from the nostrils; a rosette-like plate at base of upper 
mandible just over angle of the mouth ; a large shoe encasing the posterior part of the under 
mandible ; the latter single, the other three pieces in pairs, making seven in all which are 
moulted ; all these elements vermilion or coral-red ; end of the bill enamel-yellow. (Before 
acquiring these growths the young bird is tetraculus of authors ; the adult in winter, after 
Fig. 540. - 
H. W. Elliott. 
Crested Auk, reduced. (Ad. nat. del 
Fig. 541. — Crested Auk, in summer, nat. size. 
Fig. 542. — Crested Auk, in winter, nat. size. 
shedding them, is duhius.) A beautiful crest of 12-20 slender feathers springing from the fore- 
head, curling over forward in arc of a circle to fall gracefuUy upon the bill ; this helmet is 
blackish ; at full length about 2 inches long ; the feathers are not filamentous, but have well- 
formed webs, and are bundled or impacted together, owing to the oblique divergence of the 
♦ 
