TKISTAN DA CUNHA. 121 



men behind as they kick the "birds right and left off the nests, 

 and so you go on for a bit, thump and smash, whack, thud, " caa, 

 caa, urr, urr," and the path behind you is strewed with the 

 dead and dying and bleeding. 



But you make miserably slow progress, and, worried to death, 

 at last resort to the expedient of stampeding as far as your breath 

 will carry you. You put down your head and make a rush 

 through the grass, treading on old and young hap-hazard, and 

 rushing on before they have time to bite. 



The air is close in the rookery, and the sun hot above, and 

 out of breath, and running with perspiration, you come across 

 a mass of rock fallen from the cliff above, and sticking up in the 

 rookery ; this you hail as " a city of refuge." You hammer off it 

 hurriedly half a dozen penguins who are sunning themselves 

 there, and are on the look-out, and mounting on the top take out 

 your handkerchief to wipe away the perspiration and rest a while, 

 and see in what direction you have been going, how far you have 

 got, and in which direction you are to make the next plunge. 

 Then when you are refreshed, you make another rush, and so on. 



If you stand quite still, so long as your foot is not actually 

 on the top of a nest of eggs or young, the penguins soon cease 

 biting at you and yelling. I always adopted the stampede 

 method in rookeries, but the men usually preferred to have their 

 revenge and fought their way every foot. 



Of course it is horribly cruel thus to kill whole families 

 of innocent birds, but it is absolutely necessary. One must 

 cross the rookeries in order to explore the island at all, and 

 collect the plants, or survey the coast from the heights. 



These penguins make a nest which is simply a shallow 

 depression in the black dirt scantily lined with a few bits of 

 grass, or not lined at all. They lay two greenish white eggs 

 about as big as duck eggs, and both male and female incubate. 



After passing through the rookery, we entered one of the 

 small coppices I have already described. Hopping and flutter- 

 ing about amongst the trees and herbage, were abundance of a 

 small finch and a thrush ; no other land birds were seen. The 

 finch (Neospiza Acuhnce) looks very like a green-finch, and is 

 about the same size. 



