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184 I must" look—bends her head backwards, or screws it round sideways towards him, occasionally nibbling with her bill, also, amidst the feathers of his throat, or the thick white plumage of his breast. Presently, she stands up, revealing the small, hairy-looking chick, whose head has from time to time been visible, just peeping out from under its mother's wing. Upon this the other bird bends its head down and cossets in the same way—but very gently, and with the extreme tip of the bill—the little tender young one. The mother does so too, and then both birds, standing together side by side over the chick, pay it divided attentions, seeming as though they could not make enough either of their child or each other. It is a pretty picture, and here is another one. "A bird—we will think her the female, as she performs the most mother-like part—has just flown in with a fish—a sand-eel—in her bill. She makes her way with it to the partner, who rises and shifts the chick that he has been brooding over from himself to her. This is done quite invisibly, as far as the chick is concerned, but you can see that it is being done.

"The bird with the fish, to whom the chick has been shifted, now takes it in hand. Stooping forward her body, and drooping down her wings, so as to make a kind of little tent or awning of them, she sinks her bill with the fish in it towards the rock, then raises it again, and does this several times before either letting the fish drop or placing it in the chick's bill—for which it is I cannot quite see. It is only now that the chick becomes visible, its back turned to the bird standing over it, and its bill and throat moving as though swallowing something down. Then the bird