8 THE GANNET 



must be done by the Gannet than by the Puffin, Guillemot, 

 Cormorant, and Shag, because, though smaller birds, the 

 numbers of these latter are far greater. There is no com- 

 parison between the number of Puffins around the British 

 Isles and the number of Gannets ; they would probably be 

 as 30 to 1, or even as 50 to 1, for it is not improbable that 

 the Puffin at the jDresent day is the most numerous of all 

 British birds, the ubiquitous House-Sparrow excepted. 



(2) Then, again, Cetaceans, and all the larger fish, such as 

 cod, ling, hake, dogfish and salmon, feed on herrings to 

 a large extent. Frank Buckland and the other com- 

 missioners held that the annual destruction of herrings by 

 larger fish than themselves was something like 30,000 

 millions, twelve times as many as all the herrings caught 

 by English, Scotch, Irish, Dutch, and Norwegian fishermen 

 put together (" Report," I.e., XL). This statement of the 

 Commissioners is apparently no exaggeration. At any rate 

 it received confirmation from Professor Huxley in a lecture 

 on the herring in 1881, at which I was present. On that 

 occasion Professor Huxley's words were that five million 

 cod, ling, and hake had been taken by Scotch fishermen in 

 one year (1879), and allowing these fish to have eaten two 

 herrings a day, they would have consumed 3,500 millions.* 

 It is therefore evident that these predacious fish take 



* The professor's addi-ess is re^jrinted in " Scien. Memoirs," IV., p. 490. 



