found quite fresh eggs, eggs just ready to hatch, young birds in the down, and young birds just beginning to get a few feathers and almost able to take to the water; it was fun to see one of these when he had been unearthed waddle off to the nearest hole as fast as his legs could carry him—­generally, however, coming down every second or third step.  The reason for the irregularity in hatching was probably owing to the first brood having been lost, the eggs probably having been robbed.  During the breeding season the Puffins keep very close to their breeding-stations, and do not apparently wander more than a few hundred yards from them even in search of food; so that, unless you actually visit the islands on which they breed, you can form no idea of the number of Puffins actually breeding in the Channel Islands.  The number of Puffins, however, at Burhou seem to me to have considerably diminished of late years, for in the summer of 1866, when going through the Swinge, we passed a great flock of these birds; “in fact, for more than a mile both air and water were swarming with them."[28] This certainly was not the case in either 1876 or 1878, though there were still a great many Puffins there; probably the continued egg-stealing has had some effect in reducing their numbers.  After the breeding-season the Puffins seem to leave the Channel Islands for the winter, as they do at Lundy Island and in the British Channel; they may return occasionally, as they do in the Bristol Channel, for a short time in foggy weather; but I have never seen a Puffin in any of my passages in October and November, or in any boating expedition at that time of year, and I have never heard any of the boatmen talk about Barbelotes being seen about in the winter.  An unsigned paper, however, in the ‘Star’ for April 27th, 1878, mentions Puffins amongst other winter birds; but I very much doubt their making their appearance in the winter except as accidental visitants; there is one specimen, however, in the Museum, which, judging by the bill, must have been killed in the winter, or, at all events, to quote Dr. Bureau, “apres la saison des amours.”  Dr. Bureau, in a very interesting paper[29] on this curious change, or rather moult, which takes place in the bill of the Puffin, and which has been translated into the ‘Zoologist’ for 1878, where a plate showing the changes is given, says that Puffins are cast ashore on the coast of Brittany during the winter, for he says they leave the coast, as I believe they do that of the Channel Islands, and the only indication of their continuing there is that dead birds are rolled on the shore after severe gales in the autumn and winter; and “these birds are clad in a plumage different to that worn by those we get in the breeding-season.  In the orbital region, for instance, they have a spot, more or less large, of a dusky brown; they have not the red eyelids, nor the horny plates above and below the eye, nor have they the puckered yellow skin at