of the Outer Hebrides. 27 



and seats himself fii-mly on a projecting point of rock, armed 

 with a pole resting, end downwards, across the thigh. As 

 the birds fly backwards and forwards they are driven by the 

 wind within a few feet of his seat, and are knocked off their 

 balance by an upward blow of the pole. When this is properly 

 done the neck is broken, and the birds fall, with the force of 

 the wind, almost into the fowler's lap ; but they often recover 

 themselves and fly away. Razorbills and Puffins form the great 

 proportion of the bag ; but there are also a few Guillemots killed 

 in this way, though they do not come so close as the others, 

 and the Kittiwakes keep far below. I sat several times with a 

 man who was killing birds in this way, and counted, as well as 

 possible, the number of Ringed Guillemots which passed by. I 

 found that they were in the proportion of about one to ten or 

 twelve, which agrees with the observations of others on Ilanda 

 Island and Ailsa Craig. I took several eggs, on which I actu- 

 ally saw a Ringed bird sitting, and found they vary as much as 

 the others, though more were marked with streaks than with 

 blotches. I found considerable difference in the size of the 

 Puffins here, one of the largest of which had a beak so big that 

 at first it made me almost doubt whether Fratercula glacialis could 

 be a good species, more especially when I found it was fully as 

 large as a specimen from Grimsey Island, near Iceland, kindly 

 lent me by Mr. Tristram. All my doubts, however, were dis- 

 pelled when I saw two specimens brought back from Spitsbergen 

 by a brother- officer this summer, which were at least a fourth 

 larger than either of the others. 



One day I crossed over the Sound to Mingalay, where a land- 

 ing is by no means easy, owing to the tremendous sea which 

 rises in the narrow channel separating the two islands. To give 

 some idea of the height to which the waves rise in winter, I 

 may say that a green sea lately came right over an island in the 

 Sound, which looked as if it must be nearly one hundred feet 

 high, washing away all the sheep on it, though they had hither- 

 to been considered perfectly safe. On the west side of Minga- 

 lay the cliffs are even more stupendous than at Barra Head, 

 rising in one place to over eight hundred feet, and are so 

 smooth and perpendicular that even the Kittiwakes could hardly 



