settling. The soil, too, is honeycombed with their burrows, and in each of these, as well as in the nooks and chambers of rocks that lie closely together, there is a young fluffy black puffin, which increases the population by about a third, to say nothing of those parent birds which may also be underground. A million of puffins, I should think, must be standing, flying, or swimming in the more or less immediate vicinity; the air, especially, if it be a sunny day—or, rather, for a sunny minute or so—is like one great sunbeam full of little dancing bird-motes. On the shore they stand together in friendly groups and clusters, and leave it for those much larger gatherings where they ride, hundreds together, ducking and bobbing on the light waves like a fleet of little painted boats, each one with a highly ornamental bird-or, rather, puffin-headed prow. Thus their duties are carried on under the mantle of social pleasure; it is all a coming and going between a land-party and a sea-party, so that the domestic life of these birds would be a type and pattern of feminine happiness if only they were a little—by which I mean vastly—more noisy. Puffins indeed are somewhat silent birds—at least they have been so during the time I have seen them—from the middle of June, that is to say, till the middle of August—though as they can and do utter with effect, on occasions, they are, perhaps, more vociferous at an earlier period, before domestic matters have become so far advanced. Not that amidst such a huge number of them, their note—which I have
