again. She meets him, jodels over him a little, and soon they are lying close pressed together, as before.
I have now to mention that the parent who, up to the present, has taken most charge of the chick, and which I have therefore been calling the mother, has the curious narrow white circle, or rather ellipse, round the eye, with a straight line, also white, projecting backwards from the backward corner of it. The other one has no such mark, or rather he has it without the white feathers, for, as I believe is the case with all these birds, the same thing is represented by a depression or groove in the plumage, which is especially noticeable along the backward-running line. If we suppose the white mark to be an adornment gained by sexual selection, what are we to think of the depression which preceded it? Is it sufficiently obvious to be noticed by the birds in each other, and if so, can it be supposed to be pleasing to them? Considering how close together guillemots stand on the ledges, I should think it must be as plain to their observation as a parting down the hair is to ours. Hair-partings are admired by us, and so, too, are gashes on the face, even in intellectual Germany. But though the mark may not represent any special sexual adornment, the white colour which so powerfully emphasises it may, and this, perhaps, has come about owing to the nipping in of the feathers, along the line of depression, having stopped the flow of the colouring pigment.
The little chick, now, pushing, as it seems, against
