86 
TAME DIVERS. 
When an ideal home for the diving-birds is con- 
structed at the Zoo, we may hope to see them sitting 
in the sunlight on the flat rocks they love, and watch 
the guillemots and razorbills rearing their young, or 
swimming on the surface with their offspring sitting 
on their backs as they do off the cliffs of Freshwater 
and Flamborough Head. These rock-fowl, unlike 
the gulls and terns, are more easily tamed, and in a 
sense domesticated, than any other bird except the 
parrot. But unlike the parrots, they have so little 
fear of man in a wild state, that is when quite young, 
but able to fish for themselves at sea, that two or 
three days in human company are enough to attach 
them firmly to their new acquaintances. The tameness 
of the full-grown young razorbills when engaged in 
fishing in the narrow waters of the lochs on the west 
coast of Scotland has been more than once mentioned 
to the writer ; they hardly care to move out of the 
way of a yacht’s boats, when these are rowing to and 
from the shore or rowing up the lochs. The young 
full-grown birds would allow the boats almost to row 
