10 Dr. R. 0. Cunningham on the Solan Goose. 



on the rock, to return home re infectd, all his labour for that night 

 being spent in vain. Here is a large field of diversion iov Apol- 

 lonius Tyanceus, who is said to have travelled many kingdoms 

 over, to learn the language of beasts and birds. 



" Besides this way of stealing upon them in the night-time, 

 they are also catched in common gins of horse-hair, from which 

 they do struggle less to extricate themselves than any other fowl, 

 notwithstanding their bigness and strength ; they are also caught 

 in the herring loches, with a board set on purpose to float above 

 water, upon it a herring is fixed, which the goose perceiving, 

 flies up to a competent height until he finds himself making a 

 straight line above the fish, and then bending his course perpen- 

 dicularly, piercing the air as an arrow from a bow, hits the 

 board, into which he runs his bill with all his force irrecover- 

 ably, where he is unfortunately taken. The Solan Goose comes 

 about the middle of March with a south-west wind, warm snow, 

 or rain, and goes away according as the inhabitants determine 

 the time, i.e., the taking away or leaving its egg, whether at the 

 first, second, or third time he lays. 



"They preserve the Solan Geese in their pyramids for the 

 space of a year, slitting them in the back, for they have no salt 

 to keep them with. They have built above five hundred stone 

 pyramids for their fowls, eggs, &c, 



" We made particular enquiry after the number of the Solan 

 Geese consumed by each family the year before we came there, 

 and it amounted to twenty-two thousand six hundred in the 

 whole island, which they said was less than they ordinarily did, 

 a great many being lost by the badness of the season, and the 

 great current into which they must be thrown when they take 

 them, the rock being of sucli an extraordinary height that they 

 cannot reach the boat.^^ 



In Martinis subsquent work on the Western Islands, published 

 in 1 703, we are favoured with some additions to our knowledge 

 of the habits of the bird and the uses that are made of it. He 

 states, as illustrative of its indiscriminate employment of mate- 

 rials in the construction of its nest, that the steward of St. Kilda 

 told him that in one nest had been found a red coat, and in another 

 a brass dial, an arrow, and some Molucca beans. He also says 



