Part of the Guillemot’s history is still little understood. We know that it arrives at its wonted breeding stations on its accustomed day in spring, that it remains there till, towards the end of summer, its young are hatched and able, as they soon are, to encounter the perils of a seafaring life, when away go all, parents and progeny. After that time it commonly happens that a few examples are occasionally met with in bays and shallow waters. Tempestuous weather will drive ashore a large number in a state of utter destitution—many of them indeed are not unfrequently washed up dead—but what becomes of the bulk of the birds, not merely the comparatively few thousands that are natives of Britain, but the tens and hundreds of thousands, not to say millions, that are in summer denizens of more northern latitudes, no one can yet say. This mystery is not peculiar to the Guillemot, but is shared by all the Alcidae that inhabit the Atlantic Ocean. Examples stray every season across the Bay of Biscay, are found off the coasts of Spain and Portugal, enter the Mediterranean and reach Italian waters, or, keeping further south, may even touch the Madeiras, Canaries, or Azores; but these bear no proportion whatever to the mighty hosts of whom they are literally the “scouts,” and whose position and movements they no more reveal than do the vedettes of a well-appointed army. The common Guillemot of both sides of the Atlantic is replaced further northward by a species with a stouter bill, the U. arra or U. bruennichi of ornithologists, and on the west coast of North America by the U. californica. The habits of all these are essentially the same, and the structural resemblance between all of them and the Auks is so great that of late several systematists have relegated them to the genus Alea, confining the genus Uria to the Guillemots of another group, of which the type is the U. grylla, the Black Guillemot of British authors, the Dovekey or Greenland Dove of sailors, the Tysty of Shetlanders. This bird assumes in summer an entirely black plumage with the exception of a white patch on each wing, while in winter it is beautifully marbled with white and black. Allied to it as species or geographical races are the U. maηdti, U. columba, and U. carbo. All these differ from the larger Guillemots by laying two or three eggs, which are generally placed in some secure niche, while the members of the other group lay but a single egg, which is invariably exposed on a bare ledge. (a. n.)