iQoo] Halkett — Gannets and Cormorants. 149 



to appreciate its beauty. It is silvery or ice-like in colour, and 

 certainly is as beautiful a bird's eye as I have yet seen. 



The following- outline of some of the external characters of 

 the white gannet was made from a few skins. The bill is longer 

 than the head, and cleft beyond the eyes. It tapers towards the 

 tip, and is not hooked, as it is in the case of the cormorants. 

 The mandibles have keen cutting edges, as I experienced, for one 

 bird almost bit the top of my thumb off. There is a nasal groove, 

 but the nostrils are abortive. The gular-sac is rudimentary but 

 unfeathered. The wings are of great expanse — one I measured 

 ^ was fully six feet from tip to tip. The tail is wedge-shaped and 

 the shape and position of the feet give an equi-balance to this 

 species which is lacking in the other birds of the order. 



The eggs of Gannets are encrusted in a calcareous deposit. 

 When that is removed they are of a pale bluish-white colour. The 

 specimens I have examined were all denuded of the rough outer 

 coating. Gannets are said to lay only one egg at a hatching. 



An interesting fact, in connection with Gannets, was brought 

 to light in the year 1888, in the discovery in the Gulf of California, 

 by Col. Goss, of two new species, one of which has been ascribed 

 to him as Sula gossi, its vernacular name being the Blue-footed 

 Booby; whilst the other is called Suhi brewsien, the vernacular 

 name ot this species being Brewster's Booby. 



In the possession of Prof. Cope are fossil remains of a Gannet 

 {Sula loxosiyla) from the Miocene of North Carolina. 



After what has been pointed out relative to our Gannet, I 

 need hardly enter into the structural peculiarities of Anserine birds, 

 in order to convince the incredulous that the Solan-goose is no 

 goose. 



About half the species of Toti-palmate birds are Cormorants, 

 and they are almost cosmopolitan in their distribution. It is well 

 known that the Chinese employ them in fishing. I have been for- 

 tunate enough to observe them in the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, 

 and in one instance in the Behring Sea. Never can I forget the 

 quaint appearance of a craggy rock or islet in Barclay Sound, 

 Ucluelet, at the west" side of Vancouver Island, with three Shags 

 or Cormorants sitting bolt upright upon it. The cormorant I 

 saw in the Behring Sea w.is a stray individual, as these birds do 



