with the chick underneath him. The poor mother yields each time to the storm, scuttles out of the way, seems perplexed and startled, but keeps firm hold of the fish. Driven away over and over again, she always comes back, and at length, by dint of perseverance and right feeling, weathers the storm, insinuates herself into the place of the greedy bird and begins to feed the chick. A new chord of feeling is now struck, and the bird that has been so greedy and ill-tempered cooperates in the most tender and interested manner with the wife whom he has outraged. The 'scene' of a moment ago is forgotten, and there is now a widely different and more accustomed one of family concord, tenderness, and peace."
I cannot think that such conduct as the above is common, and even on this one occasion when I saw it, it is possible (though it does not seem very likely) that the ill-behaving bird did not try to get the fish for its own sake, but only to feed the chick with. But however this may have been, fish are the constant cause of disturbance amongst the birds generally, and the guillemot that flies in with one has to avoid the snaps made at it by all those near to where he alights, and must sometimes run the gauntlet of most of the birds on the ledge before he can get with it to his own domicile. Sometimes he loses the fish, which is then often lost again by the successful bird, and so passed from one to another.
Or it may be tugged at for a long time by two birds that have a firm hold of the head and tail part respectively, and pull it backwards and forwards, not infrequently across the neck of a third bird standing between them. Birds incubating or brooding over
