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



Bass Rock ; but the first detailed record of the habits of the spe- 

 cies that we meet with occurs in the ' Scotorum Historise ' of 

 Hector Boece, published in 1526. In this curious and interest- 

 ing old work we are informed that the Bass Rock, in the Firth of 

 Forth, is inhabited by an immense quantity of birds, called Solands 

 in the vernacular tongue, and not unlike those termed Water- 

 Eagles [aquilas aquatiles) by Pliny ; that when they first arrive 

 in the early spring, they collect wood for building their nests in 

 such abundance, that the inhabitants of the island are thereby 

 enabled to provide themselves with a stock of fuel sufficient to 

 last them throughout the year; that they feed their young with 

 very delicate fish, which they obtain by diving with great velo- 

 city from the rock into the sea ; finally, that the young are a 

 source of great profit to the lord of the castle, for a very valu- 

 able oil, of great service in curing diseases of the hip and other 

 of the joints, is obtained from the fat lying beneath the skin 

 and that associated with the internal parts. 



The next historian of the bird appears to have been William 

 Turner, an English physician and naturalist, of considerable 

 note in his day. In a small octavo volume on the birds made 

 mention of by Pliny and Aristotle*, which he published at 

 Cologne in 1544, he tells us that the ''solend guse," is a sea- 

 bird, " ex uenatu piscium uictitans," a little less than the Ber- 

 nicle, but a veritable Goose as regards form and voice ; that it 

 builds on the high cliffs of the Bass island, in the Scottish sea, 

 but nowhere else in Britain ; that it tends its young with such 

 affection that when boys are let down the face of the rock by 

 means of ropes, for the purpose of carrying them off, it attacks 

 them with great ferocity ; and that from its fat the Scots make 

 an ointment which is regarded as of great value in the treatment 

 of many diseases. 



Conrad Gesner, in the third book of his ' Historise Ani- 

 malium'tj which appeared eleven years subsequently to the 



* Avivm prsecipvarvm, quarvm apvd Plinivm et Aristotelem mentio 

 est, brevis & succincta liistoria. Colonise, 1544. 



t Conradi Gesneri Tigurini, medici & Pliilosophiae Professoiis in 

 Schola Tigurina, Historise Animaliiim Liber III. qui est de Auium natura, 

 Tigiiri, MDLV. p. 1.58. 



