“I can’t show miss a razor-bill to-night,” said the man, “without going a good way; for every bird keeps its rock to itself.”
Mrs. Merton now gave the man something for his trouble, and they returned to the hotel, where they found Mr. Merton waiting tea for them.
Agnes was quite delighted to tell her papa what she had seen; “but I suppose,” said she, “what the old man said about the old birds carrying down the young ones on their backs, could not be true.”
“It appears very strange, certainly,” said Mr. Merton, “but my friend, Mr. Waterton, who I believe knows more about birds than any other man living, has often told me the same thing.”
“Can you tell me anything more about these birds?” asked Agnes.
“The bird you saw,” said Mr. Merton, “is generally called the foolish guillemot, because it lays its egg on the bare rock, without any nest. I say its egg, for each female bird is said to lay only one; on which she sits, in an upright, and, in what appears to us, a most awkward position, till the egg is hatched; which is generally about a month. The young birds are at first covered with a sort of yellow down, mixed with bristly hair; and, as they sit on narrow ledges of rock, only a few inches in breadth, it seems wonderful how they can help tumbling into the sea.”
“But, if each bird lays only one egg, I wonder there are so many young ones,” said Agnes; “for I should think that a great many eggs must be broken or stolen.”
“It is said that, if the female guillemot loses her egg, she lays another; and, if that goes, another; so that she always has one egg to sit upon; just as a spider is enabled to form several new webs, if you destroy its old ones, though it would not have made the first any larger or stronger if it had been left unmolested. Would you like to see a willock’s egg, Agnes?”
“Very much indeed.”
Mr. Merton rang the bell; and, at his desire, the waiter procured an egg of one of these birds from an old woman who lived in the neighbourhood; and who, after boiling the eggs to make them keep, had them for sale. This egg Mr. Merton purchased, and gave Agnes. It was very large, and of a pear-shape; and its colour was a fine bluish green, blotched and streaked with reddish brown and black.