286 PROCEEDINGS OF THE 



" again. I have never known an instance of the male bird hatch- 

 " ing out an egg if the female has been shot. The egg is in- 

 " variably left to rot, or is carried off by crows or gulls. But if 

 " the female is killed after the egg is hatched, the male bird will 

 " bring up the young one. The male always assists in feeding 

 " the young whilst the female is alive, but I never observed him 

 " feed the female while sitting. I do not think he feeds her, for 

 " she is absent a while every day. The rock is so hot that the 

 " eews are never cold. 



so 



" The young birds do not fly down to the water from the cliffs 

 " they are hatched upon. One of the old birds takes hold of a 

 " wing, at the shoulder, and flies to the water with the young bird. 

 " They do not alight upon the water immediately when they come 

 " to it, but fly for a few yards along the surface, and alight, after 

 " recovering their balance, which is lost by the change in the 

 " direction of their flight. The young one swims round the 

 " parent bird for about ten minutes, and the old one then takes it by 

 " the back of the neck and dives with it for a few seconds. She 

 " repeats this lesson several times, stopping longer under the water 

 " each time. Then she dives and takes up some food for the 

 " poor little one. Within an hour it is diving and following 

 " her, but is seen on the surface long before the old bird appears. 

 " The young are not fully fledged when taken to the water. The 

 " old birds take from 21 to 24 days to hatch the eggs, and the 

 " young are about the same length of time before they are fit to go 

 " down to the water. The young are often driven on shore in 

 " coarse weather and killed. On a fine day upwards of 100 may 

 " be seen taken down from the cliffs in the above manner. I have 

 " never seen them taking the young birds down on their backs, 

 " although the natives of Berneray have told me that they did so." 



" In 1869 I selected four ledges and marked on each ledge 

 " twelve young birds on the web of the foot with a pair of scissors, 

 " in the same way as many mark the domestic goose, in order to 

 " ascertain if they came back to the same ledges on which they 

 " were hatched. But I was in bad health when the birds came in 

 " 1870, and I was not able to go down amongst them. I wrote 

 " to a native to try and pick out the marked ones, and to tell me 

 " where they were found, and what mark they had on the foot. 

 " He did not reply, and so my experiment was lost. 



" I have omitted to mention that, when the rock-birds come 



