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Rh down upon them from the edge of the cliff, at a height of not more than twenty feet or so, I was enabled to see the whole process. Judging by their actions, any one would have said that these birds had a chick, and were feeding it; and calling up the many such scenes that I was witness of when last here, I can think of no point in which they differed from this present one, except in the presence of the chick. This curious make-believe, or whatever it may be called, lasted for some little time, but at last, I think, one of the birds ate the fish. Between them, at any rate, it swam out of the ken of my glasses.

And now, what is the meaning of all this? Many birds, of course, are in the habit of feeding one another—conjugally or loverly—or the male is in the habit of feeding the female, and this seems the most obvious and natural explanation here. I do not, however, think that this is a special trait of the guillemot, and inasmuch as there are but few young birds now, it is quite a rare thing to see a bird flying in with a fish in its bill. I believe, myself, that when a childless one does so, it is with the idea of feeding the chick—the last one, the one that it remembers and pictures as still on the ledge—in its mind; and it is the more easy for me to think this, because I feel sure that this habit of conjugal feeding has grown out of the feeding of the young, and I can even imagine that, by one of those mental transitions which with animals (as with savages) are so quick and so easy, the bird offering the food, does,