16 
Regions, this species was found in great 
abundance in Baffin's Bay and Davis's 
Straits; and in latitude 76, was (as we 
are assured by Capt. Sabine) " so nume- 
rous in the channels of water separating 
fields of ice, that many hundreds were 
killed daily, and the ships* company sup- 
plied with them. The whole of the birds 
in the breeding season (the sexes being 
alike) had the under part of the neck an 
uniform sooty black, terminating abruptly 
and in an even line against the white of 
the belly : the young birds, which we saw 
in all stages from the egg, as soon as they 
were feathered were marked exactly as the 
mature birds : but in the third week of 
September, when we were on our passage 
down the American coast, every specimen, 
whether old or young, was observed to be 
in change ; and in the course of a few days 
the entire feathers of the throat and cheeks 
*Capt. Ross, in his account of the Voyage, mentions 
the same, and says that " they are extremely palatable; 
and although feeding chiefly on a small species of Can- 
cer, with which the arctic seas abound, they *rere 
free from the taste of fish." 
