secure a standing place in the general throng. There can be little doubt that in such crowded spots as the “Pinnacles,” many of the eggs never reach maturity. The Guillemot makes no nest of any kind, but lays its single large pear-shaped egg on any suitable ledge, or in any available hollow where it can be tolerably safe from toppling over into the sea. There are few more stirring sights in the bird-world than a large colony of Guillemots. I still retain the vivid impressions made upon my mind by the vast hordes of these birds at St. Kilda, at the Farne Islands, and elsewhere. Even whilst I write, I can once more see the struggling, quarrelling, rowdy hosts of Guillemots that crowd the famous “Pinnacles”; still see them pouring off in endless streams, headlong into the water, as I prepared to scale their haunt. Once more memory recalls and paints in vivid scene the beetling St. Kildan cliffs, with their rows and rows of white-breasted Guillemots, sitting tier upon tier, upwards and upwards towards the dark blue sky; my tiny boat tossing like a cork on the wild Atlantic swell, and the countless swarms of Guillemots swimming in the sea around me, hastening to the cliffs or returning from them, beaten off by more fortunate possessors of a place. The Guillemot lays a single egg, without making a nest of any kind for its reception. If this egg be taken, however, the bird will lay a second or a third, and advantage is taken of this fact by those persons that gather them for a livelihood. The egg of no other known bird varies to such an extraordinary extent as that of the Guillemot, whilst few, if any, are more beautiful. Greens, browns, yellows, pale blues, and white, form the principal ground colour; the markings, which take the form of spots, blotches, streaks, and zones, are composed of browns, grays, and pinks, of every possible tint. One variety is white, intricately laced, netted, and streaked with pink; another is a beautiful green, streaked in the same manner with yellow, light brown, or nearly black; others of various ground colours are zoned with blotches, or marked with fantastic-shaped spots and rings. Some eggs of the Guillemot closely resemble those of the Razorbill, but may be distinguished by the yellowish-white interior of the shell when held up to the light.