PUFF-ADDER. See Viper.

PUFF-BIRD, the name first given, according to Swainson {Zool. Illustrations, ser. 1, ii., text to pl. 99), by English residents in Brazil to a group of Birds known to ornithologists as forming the testricted Family Bucconidae, but for a long time confounded, under the general name of Barbets, with the Capitonidae of modern systematists, who regard the two Families as differing very considerably from one another. Some authors have used the generic name Capito in a sense precisely opposite to that which is now usually accorded to it, and the natural result has been to produce one of the most complex of the many nomenclatural puzzles that beset Ornithology. Fortunately there is no need here to enter upon this matter, for each group has formed the subject of· an -elaborate work—the Capitonidae being treated by the Messrs Marshall, and the Bucconidae by Mr Sclater —in each of which volumes the origin of the confusion has been explained, and to either of them the more curious reader may be confidently referred. The Bucconidae are zygodactylous Birds belonging to the large heterogeneous assemblage in the present work generally looked upon as forming the “Order” Picariae (see Ornithology, vol. xviii. p. 41), and commonly considered nowadays to be most nearly allied to the Galbulidae (Jacamar. vol. xiii. p. 531), and like them confined to the Neotropical Region, in the middle parts of which, and especially in its Sub-Andean Sub-region, the Puff-birds are, as regards species, abundant; while only two seem to reach Guatemala and but one Paraguay. As with most South-American Birds, the habits and natural history of the Bucconidae have been but little studied, and of only one species, which happens to belong to a rather abnormal genus, has the nidification been described. ...

PUFFIN, the common English name of a sea-bird, the Fratercula arctica of most ornithologists, known however on various parts of the British coasts as the Bottlenose, Coultemeb, Pope, Sea-Parrot, and Tammy-Norie, to say nothing of other still more local designations, some (as Marrott and Willock) shared also with allied species of Alcidae, to which Family it has, until very lately, been invariably deemed to belong. Of old time Puffins were a valuable commodity to the owners of their breedingplaces, for the young were taken from the holes in which they were hatched, and “being exceeding fat,” as Carew wrote in 1602 {Survey of Cornwall, fol. 35), were “kept salted, and reputed for fish, as coming neerest thereto in their taste.” In 1345, according to a document from which an extract is given in Heath’s Islands of Sdlly (p. 190), those islands were held of the crown at a yearly rent of 300 Puffins or 6s. 8d., being one-sixth of their estimated annual value. A few years later (1484), either through the birds having grown scarcer or money cheaper, only 50 Puffins are said {op. cit., p. 196) to have been demanded. It is stated by both Gesner and Caius that they were allowed to be eaten in Lent. Ligon, who in 1673 published a History of the Island of Barbadoes, speaks (p. 37) of the ill taste of Puffins “which we have from the isles of Scilly,” and adds “this kind of food is only for servants.” Puffins used to resort in vast numbers to certain stations on the coast, and are still plentiful on some, reaching them in spring with remarkable punctuality on a certain day, which naturally varies with the locality, and after passing the summer there, leaving their homes with similar precision. They differ from most other Alcidae in laying their single egg (which is ...