110 
TPIE VOYAGE OF THE VEGA. 
[chap. 
now flies up again, others seek their safety like rats in conceal¬ 
ment among the blocks of stone. But they soon creep out 
again, in order, as if by agreement, to fly out to sea and search 
for their food, which consists of Crustacea and vermes. The 
rotge dives with ease. Its single blueish-white egg is laid on 
the bare ground without a nest, so deep down among the stones 
that it is only with difficulty that it can be got at. In the 
talus of the mountains north of Horn Sound I found on the 
I8th June, 1858, two eggs of this bird lying directly on the 
layer of ice between the stones. Probably the hatching season 
had not then begun. Where the 
main body of these flocks of birds 
passes the winter, is unknown,^ 
but they return to the north 
early—sometimes too early. Thus 
in 1873 at the end of April I 
saw a large number of rotges 
frozen to death on the ice in the 
north part of Hiidoopen Strait. 
When cooked the rotge tastes 
exceedingly well, and in con¬ 
sequence of the great develop¬ 
ment of the breast muscles it 
affords more food than could be expected from its small size. 
Along with the rotge we find among the ice far out at sea 
flocks of alkoo^ (looms, or Briinnich’s guillemots), and the nearer 
we come to the coast, the more do these increase in number, 
especially if the cliffs along the shore offer to this species of sea- 
fowl—the most common of the Polar lands—convenient hatching 
places. For this purpose are chosen the faces of cliffs which rise 
perpendicularly out of the sea, but yet by ledges and uneven 
' It deserves to be investigated whether some little auks do not, like the 
Spitzbergen ptarmigan, pass the winter in their stone mounds, flying out 
to sea only at pretty long intervals in order to collect their food. 
Swedish, Alkekung. {Mergulus Alle, L.) 
