njecture. "Sea-fairy" were more appropriate.

This was the Hyperborean Phalarope,--a big name for so tiny a creature.
Nuttall says that in 1833 great numbers of them appeared about Chelsea
Beach. Ruddy, airy, fairy, feathered Graces, they must seem in our
practical Yankee land like a mythology on wings, a flock of exquisite
old Grecian fancies, flitting, light, and sweetly strange, and almost
impossible, through the atmosphere of modern industries.

Soon a new attraction. It was a bird in the water quite near, about the
size of a pigeon, though slenderer, glossy black, save a patch of pure
white on the wing, and with an eye that glittered like a black jewel.

"Sea-pigeon," said the artist, and desired his skilful Canadian to
secure the prize. The other arose and took deliberate aim. The bird, now
not more than ten yards distant, did not offer to fly, and made no
attempt to swim away, but kept its paddles well under it, with its head
turned from us, while it swung lightly from side to side, glancing
backward with its keen, audacious eye, now over this shoulder, now over
that. The gun flashed; the shot spattered over the spot where a bird had
been; but _quicker_ than a flash that creature was under water and well
out of harm's way! The shot could have been scarcely out of the muzzle
before he had disappeared. To see such inconceivable celerity reminded
one that the wings of gnats, which vibrate fifteen thousand times in a
second, and light, that makes (_vide_ Tyndale) twenty and odd millions
of undulations in going an inch, are not without their fellow-wonders in
Nature. Meanwhile the whole performance was so cool and neat that I
could not afterwards help thinking of this creature as a humorist, and
picturing it as quietly chuckling to itself under water. With reason,
too; for above water was such a prolonged and ludicrous stare of
amazement from at least three pairs of eyes as might satisfy the most
immoderate appetite for the laughable.

This artful dodger was the Black Guillemot. It cannot be shot, if its
eye is on the fowler. Eager for "specimens," I tried my long, powerful
ducking-gun upon it an hour or two later, sufficiently to prove this.
The birds would wait and watch, all the while glancing from side to
side, and dip, dip, dipping their bills in the water with infinite wary
quickness of movement, and yet with an air of audacious unconcern; but
the pull at the trigger seemed to touch some nerve in them, and by