I 4 4 ANNALS OF SCOTTISH NATURAL HISTORY 



numerous. I counted fifty pairs, and then stopped ; but 

 there must have been very many more, for the mist became 

 a thick fog, so that one could only see a short way from the 

 ship, and it was not until much delay on this account that 

 we reached our destination. 



Arrived at St. Kilda, Mr. Evans made inquiry of the 

 people, to all of whom, from his frequent visits, he is well 

 known, as to this large kind of Shearwater. Most of them 

 professed their ignorance of it, but some two or three thought 

 they had seen such a bird when fishing at a distance from 

 the land. He offered a suitable reward for a specimen if 

 one could be procured, and so we came away ; but here I 

 may remark that, in accordance with his usual practice of 

 being an observing and not a collecting naturalist, on neither 

 of these occasions was there a gun on board his yacht. On 

 the 27th June, being the anniversary of the day on which 

 we had seen the birds between Lewis and North Rona, we 

 were passing along the very same course, but not a Great 

 Shearwater showed itself. 



I am not sure whether it was later in this year, or in the 

 autumn of the next, that two or three Great Shearwaters 

 were seen by Mr. Evans to the southward of Skye. However, 

 in 1897, Mr. Evans, on revisiting St. Kilda, had delivered to 

 him the skin of an undoubted Great Shearwater, which had 

 been killed with an oar by a fisherman at some distance 

 from the islands on the 7th of August in that year. The 

 promised reward was duly paid, and the specimen was most 

 appropriately sent to Mr. W. Eagle Clarke to be placed in 

 the Museum of Science and Art in Edinburgh. Two more, 

 killed by St. Kilda fishermen in the same way, one to the 

 south and the other to the north of the islands, in the fourth 

 week of July 1899, were handed over to Mr. Evans on one 

 of his visits last year, and these he has most kindly given to 

 the Zoological Museum of his old University. 



Examining these specimens on their reaching Cambridge, 

 I was at once struck by the state of their plumage. When 

 the birds met their death they were in deep moult, and it 

 was of such a kind that though I will not undertake to assert 

 that they must have been wholly unable to fly, yet their 

 power to do so must have been seriously impaired. Struck 



