338 OUR RARER BIRDS 



and rolling it over and over as she watches you suspiciously 

 and prepares for flight. She seems quite ignorant of the fact 

 that eggs are brittle things ; but there is method, I suppose, in 

 the process. This singular habit, however, has not escaped 

 the notice of certain Natural History wizards, who would 

 fain have us believe that the Gannet hatches her egg by 

 holding it in her webbed foot, and not by the legitimate and 

 almost universal process ! 



As I previously stated, it is an easy task to obtain the 

 eggs of the Gannets, so long as you confine your operations to 

 the summit of the rocks. Here a child may take them ; but 

 when you descend to the nests far down the face of the cliffs 

 your search is attended with no small amount of danger. For 

 the purpose of becoming thoroughly acquainted with the nests 

 of the Gannet in places where man could not tamper with 

 them, I climbed down the cliffs on to the low-lying ledges. 

 Here the nests are so close together that the greatest caution 

 must be exercised or you w^ould break numbers of eggs. 

 Sometimes aided by the rope, and sometimes with hands and 

 feet alone, I reached the most densely populated shelves and 

 platforms midway down the beetling precipice. The sea was 

 dashing against the rocks some two hundred feet below, and 

 the Gannets on every side were leaving their nests, disgorging 

 fish previous to taking wing, or with loud cries making ready 

 to defend their eggs. Here and there pairs of Kittiwakes 

 were sitting close together on the ledges, and now and then 

 a Jackdaw flew hurriedly past, whilst numbers of Guillemots 

 darted from the rock crevices and shelves in hurried flight to 

 the ocean below. It was indeed a grand impressive sight. 

 The air all along the face of the cliff, and for some distance 

 out above the water, w^as filled with thousands of fluttering 

 Gannets ; the rocks around me were almost as densely popu- 

 lated ; and the sea below was swarming with Puffins, Guille- 

 mots, Gulls, and vast numbers of Gannets. Few birds fly so 



