The Horn-billed Puffin 
Each tunnel has a spur or blind alley which, presumably, is occupied by 
the male during the honeymoon. P'or lining, the nuptial chamber boasts 
nothing more pretentious than a few dead salal leaves and a handful of 
dried grasses. 
When the single egg is laid the male bird leaves his mate and forages 
at sea, accomplishing to this end almost incredible journeys—sixty miles, 
say—to get to a favorite feeding ground, and as much to return, after 
nightfall, laden with sand launces, or their partially digested equivalent. 
There is a noisy exchange between partners at ten p.m., and another just 
before daybreak, but whether the female invariably takes the night shift 
at sea, or whether there is a fairer division, turn and turn about, we do 
not yet know. A Horn-bill hen, discovered upon her nest, has all the de¬ 
fiant virtue of her sex and calling. The one figured on p. 1521 was sitting on 
nothing at all, not even a clam-shell; but neither is that original with the 
Rhino. She is quite ready to peck, too, and a glove is to be recommended 
for these psychological studies. When given her freedom, the Horn-bill in¬ 
variably pitches headlong down the declivity, barely clearing the vegeta¬ 
tion, until she reaches the level of the water, whereupon she flies away with 
a swift, even stroke, about a foot above the surface, until lost to sight. 
In June the chick hatches, a child of night; and he is appropriately 
clad in a suit of slaty black down. He has no desire to see the light, least 
of all as prepared for him by pick and shovel. He feels quite ill at ease 
when exposed, and spends his entire time shifting about restlessly in the 
end of a burrow remaining to him, and searching in his soul why he may 
not find greater privacy. 
The children of the night-shift are all alike in this, that they love dark¬ 
ness rather than light. That this was not always true of the Horn-billed 
Puffin we have curious evidence in the coloring of the egg. Viewed in the 
large, the purpose of pigmentation is protective. The egg of the gull, ex¬ 
posed to the full glare of day, is dark-colored and so splashed and blotched 
with brownish blacks that it blends in admirably with its surroundings ol 
dead grasses and dun rocks, and is thus lost to hostile view. But when a 
species begins to forsake the open and there is no longer need of heavy pig¬ 
mentation, the egg tends to revert to primitive white; that is, to unpig- 
mented calcium carbonate. Now in the case of the Horn-billed Puffin’s 
egg, as in that of all other Puffins, we find traces of an ancient color-pat¬ 
tern, undoubtedly heavy, still persisting in faint lines of umber and in 
subdued shell-markings or under-tints of lavender and lilac. These to the 
oologist are eloquent of a time ages ago before the race went moon-mad. 
J 5 2 4 
