III.] 
THE LITTLE AUK. 
109 
rounded at both ends. The eggs taste exceedingly well. The 
nest is very inconsiderable, smelling badly like the bird itself. 
When the navigator has gone a little further north and come 
to an ice-bestrewed sea, the swell ceases at once, the wind is 
hushed and the sea becomes bright as a mirror, rising and 
sinking with a slow gentle heaving. Flocks of little auks 
{Mergulus alle, L.) Briinnich’s guillemots {Uria Brunnichii, 
Sabine), and black guillemots {Uria gry lie, L.) noWswarm in the 
air and swim among the ice floes. The alke-kung (little auk), also 
called the‘‘sea king,” or rotge, occurs only sparingly off the 
southern part of Novaya Zemlya, and does not, so far as I know, 
breed there. The situation of the land is too southerly, the 
accumulations of stones along the sides of the mountains too 
inconsiderable, for the thriving of this little bird. But on 
Spitzbergen it occurs in incredible numbers, and breeds in the 
talus, 100 to 200 metres high, which frost and weathering have 
formed at several places on the steep slopes of the coast mountain 
sides; for instance, at Horn Sound, at Magdalena Bay, on the 
Norways (near 80° N.L.), and other places. These stone heaps 
form the palace of the rotge, richer in rooms and halls than any 
other in the wide round world. If one climbs up among the 
stones, he sees at intervals actual clouds of fowl suddenly emerge 
from the ground either to swarm round in the air or else to fly 
out to sea, and at the same time those that remain make their 
presence underground known by an unceasing cackling and din,, 
resembling, according to Friedrich Martens, the noise of a 
crowd of quarrelling women. Should this sound be stilled for 
a few moments, one need only attempt in some opening among 
the stones to imitate their cry (according to Martens : rott-tet- 
tet-tet-tet) to get immediately eager and sustained replies from 
all sides. The fowl circling in the air soon settle again on the 
stones of the mountain slopes, where, squabbling and fighting, 
they pack themselves so close together that from fifteen to thirty 
of them may be killed by a single shot. A portion of the flock 
