setsliire, Hampshire, and Sussex are few and far between;
nor can it be considered more than a casual visitant, principally
in tlie spring, to the east and north-east coast.
Pennant states that in bis time it was known to breed at
Llandudno and Anglesea, on tlie coast of Wales, and Montagu,
writing in 1802, says that a few used to do so near
Tenby, but tlie late Thomas Dix does not so much as mention
tlie occurrence of this species in bis ‘ Birds of Pembrokeshire,’
in ‘ Tlie Zoologist’ for 1869. Mr. Kermode
informs tlie Editor that it still breeds in small numbeis in
the Isle of Man. St. Abb’s Head, in Berwickshire, and tlie
Bass Rock have been enumerated as nesting-places, but Mr.
Harvie-Brown did not see it on bis recent visit to tlie former,
nor did tlie Editor find it on the latter. A few have been
said to breed on the Isle of May, in the Firth of Forth, but
Mr. Agnew, tlie lighthouse-keeper, says that none have done
so for tlie past sixteen years; nor is it certain that any
breed in Buclian and other counties on the east side of
Scotland, although there are undoubtedly some colonies in
Sutherland. Along the whole of the western coasts, including
both groups of islands, it is abundant; and in the
Orkneys and the Shetlands the ‘Tystie,’ as it is called, is a
familiar and characteristic species. In Ireland it breeds on
Rathlin Island, and along the coasts of Antrim, Donegal, the
western side and islands, and at some places in the south,
but Lambay Island, Howth, and other points on the east
coast are now almost, if not entirely, abandoned by it.
The Black Guillemot breeds in the Faeroes, Norway,
Denmark, and in many places in the Baltic and the Gulf of
Bothnia ; visiting the waters of North Germany, the Netherlands,
and Northern France in winter. It is common in
Iceland ; on both coasts of Greenland ; in Cumberland
Basin, and in Baffin Bay ; the last observed by Major
Feilden on the northward voyage of H.M.S. ‘Alert,’ being
on the 2nd of September, 1875, in lat. 82° 27/ N. In
the waters of Spitsbergen, Franz-Josef Land, and Novaya
Zemlya, the place of our Black Guillemot appears to be
taken by a closely-allied species, Uria manclti, which has a
more slender bill, and the feathers which form the wing-spot
are pure white without any black on the basal portion. If,
however, the identification is correct, Nordenskiold found our
Black Guillemot nesting in long. 113° E. ; the naturalist
of the ‘ Jeannette ’ observed it in abundance on Bennett
Island ; and Mr. Nelson records it as numerous throughout
Bering Sea. There it meets with its somewhat smaller
congener Uria columba, in which the white wing-spot is
divided by a triangular black patch, and the under wing-
coverts are sooty-grey instead of white. Another species,
Uria carbo, with a stouter and larger bill, no white patch on
the wings, and altogether black, except some white loral
feathers, inhabits the waters between Japan, Kamtschatka,
and Alaska. The distribution of these species is somewhat
puzzling, and is complicated by the fact that entirely black
individuals have been observed in Atlantic waters (Zool.
1878, p. 876); and a bird, apparently U. columba, was
obtained by Yon Heuglin in the vicinity of Spitsbergen.
In its nidification the Black Guillemot differs from other
members of the family, in that it lays two eggs, generally in
crevices of the cliffs, or upon the bare ground under blocks
of stone near the water’s edge. Saxby says that he has
also found them fifty or sixty yards inland, on grassy slopes
strewn with rocks, but never in anything like a nest. No
competent British ornithologist appears to have found more
than two eggs as the produce of the same bird, but Audubon
insists that three are not uncommon in North America, and
Mr. Ludwig Kumlien to some extent confirms that statement.
The egg is white, slightly tinged with green or blue,
blotched, spotted, and speckled with ash-grey, reddish-
brown, and very dark brown ; average measurements 2'3 by
1‘5 in .; and the yolk is of a very deep orange-red colour.
The birds return to their accustomed haunts year after year,
and both sexes share in the duties of incubation.
The first covering of the young bird is a greyish-black
down, through which its first feathers make their way, and
these are mottled black and white. Dunn and Saxby state,
from observation in Shetland, that the young of this species