ir presence underground known by an unceasing
cackling and din, resembling, according to Friedrich Martens, the
noise of a crowd of quarrelling women. Should this sound be
stilled for a few moments, one need only attempt in some opening
among the stones to imitate their cry (according to Martens:
_rott-tet-tet-tet-tet_) to get immediately eager and sustained
replies from all sides. The fowl circling in the air soon settle
again on the stones of the mountain slopes, where, squabbling and
fighting, they pack themselves so close together that from fifteen
to thirty of them may be killed by a single shot. A portion of the
flock now flies up again, others seek their safety like rats in
concealment among the blocks of stone. But they soon creep out
again, in order, as if by agreement, to fly out to sea and search
for their food, which consists of crustacea and vermes. The rotge
dives with ease. Its single blueish-white egg is laid on the bare
ground without a nest, so deep down among the stones that it is only
with difficulty that it can be got at. In the talus of the mountains
north of Horn Sound I found on the 18th June, 1858, two eggs of this
bird lying directly on the layer of ice between the stones. Probably
the hatching season had not then begun. Where the main body of these
flocks of birds passes the winter, is unknown,[62] but they return
to the north early--sometimes too early. Thus in 1873 at the end of
April I saw a large number of rotges frozen to death on the ice in
the north part of Hinloopen Strait. When cooked the rotge tastes
exceedingly well, and in consequence of the great development of the
breast muscles it affords more food than could be expected from its
small size.

[Illustration: THE LITTLE AUK, OR ROTGE. Swedish, Alkekung. (_Mergulus
Alle_, L.) ]

Along with the rotge we find among the ice far out at sea flocks of
_alkor_ (looms, or Bruennich's guillemots), and the nearer we come to
the coast, the more do these increase in number, especially if the
cliffs along the shore offer to this species of sea-fowl--the most
common of the Polar lands--convenient hatching places. For this
purpose are chosen the faces of cliffs which rise perpendicularly
out of the sea, but yet by ledges and uneven places afford room for
the hatching fowl. On the guillemot-fells proper, eggs lie beside
eggs in close rows from the crown of the cliff to near the sea
level, and the whole fell is also closely covered with seafowl,