126 THE SCOTTISH NATURALIST 



and had with him a man from Stirlingshire, who was 

 accustomed to rope-work. 



The inaccessibility of the positions taken up by the earlier 

 colonists is admirably represented by these Handa birds. 

 Later, as we have before shown, more accessible places are 

 of necessity occupied. 



Hebrides. 



Rona AND SULISGEIR. 1 — In 1 886 Mr R. M. Barrington 

 saw one Fulmar at North Rona. Harvie-Brown was there in 

 1885, when on a cruise in the yawl Crusader \ and did not see 

 one ; but in 1887, when on a visit in his own yacht Shiantelle, 

 he found quite a number frequenting the high cliff of the 

 western Horn, and saw one sitting on a ledge; and in the 

 same summer these birds were quite abundant around the 

 isolated stack of Sulisgeir, or — as it is also named — North 

 Barra. They were flying close round the stack, and very 

 nearly alighting, though Harvie-Brown cannot remember 

 seeing one actually do so. He shot one bird, and could 

 easily have shot many. 



The next account we have of the North Rona Fulmars is 

 given by Her Grace the Duchess of Bedford, who paid two 

 visits to the island, on 19th July and 25th August 1910. She 

 described the sights she witnessed that year as in such 

 extraordinary contrast to what Harvie-Brown had seen 

 in 1887, that we believe it best to give both accounts for 

 comparison. 



We quote the following from our Fauna of the Outer 

 Hebrides : — " On this occasion, being anxious to complete 

 my previous survey of 1885, which was a very hurried and 

 unsatisfactory one, I turned my back upon the Fork-tailed 

 Petrels' end of the island, and struck away across the rich 

 carpet of sea-pink and short sweet grass of the lower northern 

 peninsula. The sea-pink, which grows in continuous profusion 

 over the whole surface, filled the air with delicious fragrance, 

 faint but sweet. The rich but short pasturage is strewn with 

 scattered boulders, and in places these have been piled 



1 North Rona, lat. 59 05' 54", long. 5 52' 04". Sulisgeir or North 

 Barra, lat. 59 04' 26", long. 6° 14' 34". 



