penguins are to the South Pole country.

"Their burrows are two or three feet long, and the mother sits on a
single dirty white egg in a straw nest. The birds have red,
parrot-like bills, and they have pale grey faces with markings that
make them look as if they were wearing spectacles.

"Their bodies are chunky, and they shuffle about very clumsily. They
don't like it a bit when people come where they have their nests.

"But the razor-billed auk doesn't make any nest--it just lays its egg
on the bare rock in the biting cold. There are very few auks left
to-day, but there were lots of them when Audubon the naturalist
visited Labrador ninety years ago. Audubon tells how a band of
'eggers' started out just like pirates.

"All they cared about was to plunder every nest.

"They went sneaking along from cove to cove, turning in sometimes at
the little caves or finding shelter in an angle of the rocks when the
sea ran too high.

"While they were waiting they would fight and swear and drink. It's a
wonder that the eggers didn't get drowned oftener, for their boats
would be mended with strips of sealskin and the sails were patched
like an old suit, and it looked as if a puff of wind would blow them
over.

"These eggers got out of their sailing ship into a rowboat they towed,
so as to go to an island of sea-pigeons, or guillemots--because they
couldn't get near enough in the larger vessel.

"As they came to the rocks, the birds rose up in a screaming white
cloud. The air was full of them, just as you've seen the gulls
creaking and crying about the hull of an ocean steamer, hoping to pick
up food thrown overboard.

"But the mother birds stuck faithfully to the nests. It was the
fathers and brothers that rose up in the air and made the noisy fuss.

"All of a sudden--bang! the eggers discharged their guns in a volley
right into the middle of the wheeling, screaming cloud of feathers
overhead.

"Some fell into the water, and the rest in terror flew about not
knowing where to go or what to do.

"The eggers picked up the birds that lay in rumpled, bloody heaps on
the water. They made toothsome pies, and what they couldn't eat they
left behind. They didn't care how many birds they killed, because
there were plenty left.

"They weren't shooting just for food--they were shooting mostly for
fun. As they trampled about the island they crushed with their heavy
boots more eggs than they picked up.

"No one would have blam