WILLOCK. 
549 
shores, where they are never impeded by ice from diving- after their 
favourite prey, the sprat, which is there found in abundance throughout 
the winter. The foolish guillemot and the razor-bill, on the contrary, 
are indigenous to this country, breed on most of our higher cliffs that 
form a barrier to the ocean, and, after performing the great dictates of 
nature, invariably leave our shores, and retreat to some more southern 
climate ; nor is one to be found amongst the lesser guillemots and 
black-billed auks, in the winter season, so far north as Scotland, an 
accidental maimed bird excepted ; and only one or two instances have 
occurred, in which the foolish guillemot was found on the most 
southern parts of the island (Devonshire) at that season. Thus has 
nature assigned to these birds their limited stations, by forming them 
of different temperaments ; the more tender species that winter in the 
southern parts of Europe, and on the coasts of Africa, return with the 
spring to our temperate climate, and, as it were, push on the hardier 
species to their northern destination ; and in part supply the place of 
the foolish guillemot and razor-bill during the winter, and the reverse 
is the consequence of our nearer approach to the sun. 
It is, besides, contrary to every principle of reasoning upon natural 
causes, to suppose, that when the foolish guillemot and razor-bill re- 
tire in the autumn, from the southern parts of England, they should 
go to the north of Scotland, and be converted by a change of plumage 
into the two former. The supposition that any bird should migrate 
northward to pass the winter, is in direct violation of the actual cause 
of the propensity to migrate. Every species of animal that shifts its 
quarters with the seasons, breeds in the higher, and passes the winter 
in the lower latitudes. Those who may have formed an opinion that 
the two first are the young of the others, should be asked to produce 
an instance of so unnatural a case, as that of all the young of any spe- 
cies remaining behind to winter in a northern country, while the old 
birds seek a more southern climate. Besides, those who favour such 
an opinion must go further, for they must also believe that when the 
old birds leave England in the autumn, to winter along the shores of 
the southern parts of the Continent, the young birds take a contrary 
direction, and accumulate in the north of Scotland, as far as Zetland ; 
in which parts they are infinitely more abundant than any where 
further south. More need not be said to convince any reasoning mind 
of the unphilosophical principle of such an opinion. Whatever varia- 
tion may have appeared in the change of plumage of some, for which 
we cannot so readily account, we may be assured our safest guide are the 
habits, and those alone must convince us of the difference of the species 
