nly by color, but by their
smaller size;--(they eight inches long, it sixteen)--and by the slender
beaks, the coot having a thick one, half-way to a puffin's.

And here, once for all,--for I see I have taken no note yet of the
beaks or bills of my dabchicks,--I will at once arrange a formula of
the order of questions which it will be proper to ask, and get
answered, concerning any bird, in the same order always, so that we
shall never miss anything that we ought to think of. And I find these
questions will naturally and easily fall into the following twelve:

1. Country, and scope of migration.
2. Food.
3. Form and flight.
4. Foot.
5. Beak and eye.
6. Voice and ear.
7. Temper.
8. Nest.
9. Eggs.
10. Brood.
11. Feathers.
12. Uses in the world.

It may be thought that I have forced--and not fallen into--my number
12, by packing the faculties of sight and hearing into by-corners. But
the expression of a bird's head depends on the relation of eye to beak,
as the getting of its food depends on their practical alliance of
power; and the question, for instance, whether peacocks and parrots
have musical ears, seems to me not properly debatable unless with due
respect to the quality of their voices. It is curious, considering how
much, one way or another, we are amused or pleased by the chatter and
song of birds, that you will scarcely find in any ornithic manual more
than a sentence, if so much, about their hearing; and I have not
myself, at this moment, the least idea where a nightingale's ears are!
But see Appendix, p. 122.

I retain, therefore, my dodecahedric form of catechism as sufficiently
clear; and without binding myself to follow the order of it in
strictness, if there be motive for discursory remark, it will certainly
prevent my leaving any bird insufficiently distinguished, and enable me
to arrange the collected statements about it in the most easily
compared order.

115. We will try it at once on this second variety of the Titania, of
which I find nothing of much interest in my books, and have nothing
discursive myself to say.

1. Country. Arctic mostly; seen off Greenland, in lat. 68 deg., swimming
among icebergs three or four miles from shore. Abundant in Siberia, and
as far south as the Caspian. Migratory in Europe as far as Italy, yet
always rare. (Do a few only, more intelligently curious than the rest,
or for the sake of their health, travel?)

2. Food. Small thin-skinned crustacea,