THE IBIS. 



NEW SERIES. 



No. V. JANUARY 1866. 



I. — On the Solan Goose, or Gannet (Sula bassana, Linn.). By 

 Robert 0. Cunxingham, M.D. 



(Plate I.) 



The earliest reference to this well-known bird with which I 

 am acquainted, is to be found in the celebrated Anglo-Saxon 

 Chronicle, a work generally acknowledged to have been the 

 result of the labours of a number of successive hands, and re- 

 counting the events which occurred from Caesar's invasion to 

 shortly after the middle of the twelfth century. In the account 

 of the events recorded as having taken place a.d. 975, there 

 occurs the following passage : — 



Anb Jja peap'S 

 eac abjisej-eb 

 beop-mob hsele'S 

 Oj-lac Of eapde. 

 opeji y'Sa-jepealc. 

 opeji janocej- bseS. 



Then too was drireii 

 Oslac beloved 

 an exile far 

 from his native land 

 over the rolling waves, — 

 over the ganet-bath.* 



" Solendse " are also briefly mentioned by the father of Scottish 

 history, John de Fordun, in the sixth chapter of the first book 

 of his ' Scotichronicon ' -f, as building in great numbers on the 



* Edition by the Rev. J. Ingram, B.D. London, 1823. 



t Johannis de Fordun Scotichronicon, cum Supplementis ac Con- 

 tinuatione Walter! Boweri, Insulae Sanctae Columbae Abbatis : E Codici- 

 bu9 MSS. editum. Edinburgi, 1747. 



N. S. VOL. II. B 



