NAMES OF THE GANNET 27 



Scotch — is traceable as far back as Holland's poem of the 

 Houlate {i.e., Owl, or Owlet), written about A.D. 1450 : — 



" And als in the advent, 

 The Soland Stewart was sent ; 

 For he could fro the firmament 

 Fang the fische deid." 



" Houlate," III., 5. 



Paucity of Records before the Sixteenth Century. — As will 

 be related presently, it is in thirteenth century MSS. that 

 we have the first recorded allusion to any Gannets' breed- 

 ing-place, and this w^as to the now deserted settlement of 

 Lundy, From then until the Scotichronicon and Botoner's 

 "Itinerary," considered to have been written about 1478, 

 of " aves vocatse ganettys " breeding on an island, which 

 was most likely Gulland, we hear nothing more about these 

 birds. But similar lack of information exists concerning 

 almost every other kind of British bird, for birds were not 

 a subject in which the small number of lettered men of those 

 days took any interest, except it were a culinary one. It 

 was not until the appearance of Conrad Gesner's great work, 

 the " Historia Animalium," and William Turner's short 

 but invaluable Commentary on Birds, that literature had 

 further to tell us about Gannets, except in so far as they 

 are incidentally described in the early accounts of the 

 Bass Rock by John de Fordun (1448), and one or two 



