BULL ROCK 71 



eleven Gannets' nests. Mr. Hutchins has elicited a few facts 

 bearing on the question from an old fisherman named Tim 

 Harrington, namely, that, as far back as 1853 he saw 

 Gannets on the Bull, and in 1856 found nests there, and 

 these are the earliest authenticated. When Mr. Hutchins 

 was at the Bull in 1 868 many hundreds of Gannets were well 

 established and nesting, and from that time onwards this 

 settlement has flourished. 



Although the historian Smith (1756) expressly says 

 the Gannet bred nowhere in Munster except on the 

 Skelligs, yet so inaccessible a place as the Bull 

 may easily have been unknown to him, and it is 

 unlikely that it had not been used before. Probably 

 there has been interchange for a great number of 

 years between the Bull and the SkelHg, and the former 

 being the smaller settlement may even sometimes have been 

 quite deserted by Gannets. An excellent account of a visit 

 to the Bull Rock, in June, 1884, by Messrs. Ussher and 

 Barrington, from which I will make a short extract, will 

 be found in the "Zoologist" for 1884 (p. 473). After 

 assessing its then strength at 2,000, and describing the 

 appearance of the Rock, the former continues : "On 

 ascending the [Bull] Rock we found we could get to some 

 of the Gannets' building ledges, both at the east and west 

 ends, and a few of the birds remained on their nests until 



