that has fed it shifts it again to the other, who receives it with equal care, and bending down over it, appears—for it is now again invisible—to help or assist it in some way. It would be no wonder if the chick had wanted assistance, for the fish was a very big one for so small a thing, and it would seem as if he swallowed it bodily. After this the chick is again treated as an egg by the bird that has before had charge of him—that is to say, he is sat upon, apparently, just as though he were to be incubated—or suppressed, like the guinea-pigs in 'Alice in Wonderland.'"
On account of the closeness with which the chick is guarded by the parent birds, and the way in which they both stand over it, it is difficult to make out exactly how it is fed; but I think the fish is either dropped at once on the rock or dangled a little, for it to seize hold of. It is in the bringing up and looking after of the chick that one begins to see the meaning of the sitting guillemots being always turned towards the cliff, for from the moment that the egg is hatched, one or other of the parent birds interposes between the chick and the edge of the parapet. Of course I cannot say that the rule is universal, but I never saw a guillemot incubating with its face turned towards the sea, nor did I ever see a chick on the seaward side of the parent bird who was with it. It seems probable that the relative positions of the sitting bird and the egg would be continued from use after the latter had become the young one; and if we suppose that in a certain number of cases where these positions were reversed the chick perished from running suddenly out from under the parent and falling over the edge of the rock, we can understand natural selection
