8 Dr. R. O. Cunningham on the Solan Goose. 



great, the foot hath four toes webbed together. It feeds upon 

 mackrel and herring, and the flesh of the young one smells and 

 tastes strong of these fish.^' The same author also records, in 

 the course of his peregrinations in England, that he " saw 

 many of those birds, which they call gannets, flying about on 

 the water. This bird hath long legs, and a long neck, and 

 flieth strongly. Possibly it may be Catarractes *. He preys 

 upon pilchards, the shoals whereof great multitudes of these 

 fowls constantly pursue." Elsewhere we are told that they are 

 captured " by tying a pilchard to a board, and fastening it so 

 that the bird may see it, who comes down with so great swift- 

 ness for his prey, that he breaks his neck against the board." 



Sir Thomas Browne, in his 'Account of Birds found in 

 Norfolk' tj mentions " A large and strong-billed fowl, called a 

 ganet, which seems to be the greater sort of larus ; whereof I 

 met with one killed by a greyhound, near Swaffham ; another 

 in Marshland, while it fought, and would not be forced to take 

 wing : another entangled in a herring-net, which, taken alive, 

 was fed with herrings for a while. It may be named larus 

 major, leucophaopterus ; as being white and the top of the wings 

 brown." 



The account of the bird given by Willughby, in his ' Orni- 

 thology 'J, published in 1676, is brief but interesting, inas- 

 much as the peculiar attachment of the skin to the muscles, in 

 consequence of the interposition of air-sacs, is for the first time 

 taken notice of. He says, " the skin is very full, sticking loose 

 to the flesh." Of the habits of the Gannet, as seen at St. Kilda, 

 Martin seems to have been about the earliest observer. In his 

 interesting little work ' A late voyage to St. Kilda, the remotest 

 of all the Hebrides of Scotland,' published in 1698, we find the 

 following quaint account of its habits : — " The Solan Geese hatch 

 by turns ; when it returns from its fishing, it carries along with it 

 five or six herrings in its gorget, all entire and undigested : upon 

 whose arrival at the nest, the hatching fowl puts its head in the 



* Ray does not appear to have been aware that the Gannet and Solan 

 Goose were the same bird. 



t Sir Thomas Browne's Works. Wilkin's edition, vol. iv. p. 314. 

 X Book III. Part UI. section II. chap. II. (pp. 328, 329). 



