education of the baby guillemot is carried forward on Spartan
principles; for the moment he is out of the shell he is swept downward
hundreds of feet and plunged into a cold ocean, where he can sink or
swim as instinct serves him. In a life so fraught with anxieties,
exposures, and dangers, it is not strange that the guillemots keep up
a ceaseless clang of excited conversation, a very riot and wrangle of
altercation and argument which the circumstances seem to warrant. The
prospective father is obliged to take turns with the prospective
mother and hold the one precious egg on the rock while she goes for a
fly, a swim, a bite, and a sup. As there are five hundred other
parents on the same rock, and the eggs look to be only a couple of
inches apart, the scene must be distracting, and I have no doubt we
should find, if statistics were gathered, that thousands of guillemots
die of nervous prostration.

Willie and I interpreted the clamor somewhat as follows:--

[_Between parent birds._]

"I am going to take my foot off. Are you ready to put yours on? Don't
be clumsy! Wait a minute, I'm not ready. _I'm not ready, I tell you!_
NOW!!"

[_Between rival mothers_.]

"Your egg is so close to mine that I can't breathe"--

"Move your egg, then, I can't move mine!"

"You're sitting so close, I can't stretch my wings."

"Neither can I. You've got as much room as I have."

"I shall tumble if you crowd me."

"Go ahead and tumble, then! There is plenty of room in the sea."

[_From one father to another, ceremoniously._]

"Pardon me, but I am afraid I shoved your wife off the rock last
night."

"Don't mention it. I remember I shoved off your wife's mother last
year."

We walked among the tiny whitewashed low-roofed cots, each with its
silver-skinned fishes tacked invitingly against the door-frame to dry,
until we came to my favorite, the corner cottage in the row. It has
beautiful narrow garden strips in front,--solid patches of color in
sweet gillyflower bushes, from which the kindly housewife plucked a
nosegay for us. Her white columbines she calls "granny's mutches;" and
indeed they are not unlike those fresh white caps. Dear Robbie Burns,
ten inches high in plaster, stands in the sunny window in a tiny box
of blossoming plants surrounded by a miniature green picket fence.
Outside, looming white among the gillyflowers, is Sir Walter, and near
him is still another and a larger bust on a cracked pedestal a foot
high, p