H-h-h-where--ff! ff!--h-is-ee?"

"Right over here. I've been chasing him this last half-hour. Finally,
the audacious little rascal would stick up his head over a rock, and
bark at me."

I soon had him; and was again struck with the vivacity which may be
exhibited by a creature whose life is really ended. As I fired, the
animal gave a loud "whish!" and sped away like the wind, disappearing
behind a jut of rock five or six rods farther away; but five feet from
that point I found it dead. This _post mortem_ activity, they told me,
was made possible by the small size of the shot. Perhaps, then, a
creature slain with a missile sufficiently subtile might go an
indefinite time without finding it out, supposing itself alive and well.
Institutions and politicians, we have all known, possess this power of
ignoring their own decease. Judaism has been dead these eighteen hundred
years; yet here are Jew synagogues in New York and Boston. Were the like
true of individuals, it might explain to us some lives which seem
inexplicable on any other hypothesis. I think, for example, of some
editors, who are evidently post-dating their decease; and when these go
on writing leading articles, and being sweet upon "our brethren of the
South," one does not say, "Disloyal," but only, "So long in learning
what has happened!"

My prize was the white fox, a year old, and not quite in adult costume.
How it got upon this island were matter for conjecture. Probably on the
ice.

Another skip,--and here we are upon another of these summits surrounded
by sea. The home of Puffins this is. The puffin is an odd little fellow,
smaller than the auk, but of the same general hue, with a short neck and
a queer bill. This is very thin from side to side, twice as wide up and
down as it is long, strongly marked with concentric scarlet ridges, and
altogether agrees so little with this plain-looking bird, that one can
scarcely regard it as belonging naturally to him, and fancies that he
must lay it aside at night, as people do false teeth. It is an easy bird
to take flying; for, on seeing you, it peaks its wings downward in a
manner indescribably prim and prudish, and scales past, turning its
stubby neck, and inspecting you with an air of comical, muddy gravity
and curiosity. My comrade, Ph----, got two dozen to my eight; but I was
consoled with a large Arctic falcon, which had been dining at
fashionable hours on a full-grown puffin, having set its table in a deep