SOLDIERS' PILLOWS. 11^ 



The facsiinilu on page IIG of an eng-raving of 

 the bird in IMartin's book, wlien compared with our 

 photograph, illustrates the progress of human effort 

 towards truth and accuracy during the last two 

 hundred }'ears. 



- One authority states that "each Fulmar contains 

 about half a pint of oil," but my observations and 

 dissections did not corroborate this estimate. The 

 oil gives off such a strong odour that everything 

 in St. Kilda smells of it. I fetched two fowling- 

 rods away with me as curiosities, but when I g-ot 

 them home discovered that they could not be 

 tolerated anywhere in the house. Thev were, 

 therefore, relegated to an exposed corner in the 

 garden, and remained there bleaching from June to 

 November, at the end of which time the smell 

 appeared to have quite gone, and I took them 

 indoors. In a few days, however, it returned 

 again with something akin to its former streng'th. 



My friend Mackenzie told me that the feathers 

 plucked from the Fulmars are mixed with those 

 of other birds and sold to the Government for 

 stuffing soldiers' ])illows. Before being used they 

 are thoroughly fumigated, but in al)out three years 

 the smell returns to them so strongly that Tommy 

 Atkins refuses to rest his sleeping head on them 

 until they have been again roasted. 



Some notion may be formed of the number of 

 birds breeding on St. Kilda and its satellites from the 

 eggs gathered. Martin says that his party, consisting 

 of seventy souls all told, consumed sixteen thousand 

 eggs in three weeks, and that the natives, who were 

 at that time nearly tri^ile their number, ate many 

 more, man for man. He saw twenty-nine baskets 

 of eggs brought down from the rocks in one morning, 

 each of which held from four to eight hundred. 



