The specimen of _Uria troile_ drawn with a white line round the eye[189] was a female; the one without this line was a young bird. I have drawn seventeen and a half hours this day, and my poor head aches badly enough. One of Captain Billings' mates told me of the _Procellarias_ breeding in great numbers in and about Mount Desert Island rocks, in the months of June and July; there they deposit their one white egg in the deepest fissures of the rocks, and sit upon it only during the night. When approached whilst on the egg, they open their wings and bill, and offer to defend themselves from the approach of intruders. The Eider Ducks are seen leaving the islands on which they breed, at daybreak every fair morning, in congregated flocks of males or females separately, and proceed to certain fishing grounds where the water is only a few fathoms deep, and remain till towards evening, when the females sit on their eggs for the night, and the males group on the rocks by themselves. This valuable bird is extremely abundant here; we find their nests without any effort every time we go out. So sonorous is the song of the Fox-colored Sparrow that I can hear it for hours, most distinctly, from the cabin where I am drawing, and yet it is distant more than a quarter of a mile. This bird is in this country what the Towhee Bunting is in the Middle States. _June 22._ I drew all day at an adult Gannet which we brought from the great rock of which I have spoken; it was still in good order. Many eggs of the Arctic Tern were collected to-day, two or three in a nest; these birds are as shy here as all others, and the moment John and Coolidge landed, or indeed approached the islands on which they breed, they all rose in the air, passed high overhead, screaming and scolding all the time the young men were on the land. When one is shot the rest plunge towards it, and can then be easily shot. Sometimes when wounded in the body, they sail off to extraordinary distances, and are lost. The same is the case with the _Larus marinus_. When our captain returned he brought about a dozen female Eider Ducks, a great number of their eggs, and a bag of down; also a fine Wild Goose, but nothing new for the pencil. In one nest of the Eider ten eggs were found; this is the most we have seen as yet in any one nest. The female draws the down from her abdomen as far towards her breast as her bill will allow her to do, but the _feathers_ are not pulled, and on examination of several specimens I found these well and regularly planted, and cleaned from their original down, as a forest of trees is cleared of its undergrowth. In this state the female is still well clothed, and little or no difference can be seen in the plumage unless examined. These birds have now nearly all hatched in this latitude, but we are told that we shall over-reach them in that, and meet with nests and eggs as we go northeast until August. So abundant were the nests of