36 
AKAROE. 
them whilst they were sitting, without their ap¬ 
pearing to be at all alarmed. Under each of 
them were two or four eggs: the latter is the 
number they lay, but from many of them two 
had been taken for food by the natives, who 
prefer those which have young ones in them. 
The eggs are of a pale olive-green color, and 
rather larger than those of a common duck. In 
one part of the island, where there was a con¬ 
siderable quantity of rich loose mould, the 
Puffins * breed in vast numbers, forming holes 
three or four feet below the surface, resembling 
rabbits’ burrows, at • the bottom of which they 
lay a single white egg, about the size of that of 
a Lapwing, upon the bare earth. Our people 
dug out about twenty of these birds, which they 
afterwards assured me made an excellent sea-pie. 
The Icelandic fishermen catch the Puffins, and 
use their flesh for bait: this, they say, the cod 
prefer to any thing else. On all the rocks about 
* Alca arctica Linn, called in Iceland Soe-papagoie and 
Freest, in Cornwall and in the south of Scotland, according 
to Mr. Neill, Pope. In Kamtschatka and the Kurilschi 
islands, the inhabitants wear the bills of these birds about 
their necks, fastened to straps; and, according to the 
superstition of those people, their Shaman or priest must 
put them on with a proper ceremony, in order to procure 
good fortune. See Latham's General Synopsis of Birds, 
vol. v. p. 317. 
