106 THE GANNET 



with dead Gannets* for three weeks, which had all pro- 

 bably been killed at Ailsa Craig, either in the thought- 

 lessness of so-called sport or with the mistaken intention 

 of benefiting the fishermen. At one spot beneath 

 the cliff sixteen Gannets were lying together among 

 the stones, how killed it was impossible to say. Many 

 of them gave me the impression of having been dead 

 several months, but here and there was one com- 

 paratively fresh. They were lying high and dry on a 

 part of the undercliff, not ordinarily reached by the tide, 

 which may have swept others away ; if so, the mortality 

 was all the larger. The Gannet is very liable to accidents, 

 and it is not unlikely that some of them get carried 

 against the cliffs in a gale, or during a fog, and strike the 

 hard rock with so much violence as to be killed or injured. 

 This is an accident which sometimes befalls the Manx 

 Shearwater.! 



The Gannet is a bird which in some ways is a marvel of 

 intelligence ; in other ways it is very much the reverse. 

 For example, it will precipitate itself on a dead herring 



* " Zoologist," 1865, p. 9597. 



f I have found five-and-twenty Shearwaters in a walk in the Scilly 

 Islands, most of them showing marks of a violent blow, and all dead. 

 Storm Petrels are also known to dash themselves against the rocks 

 occasionally when borne away by the wind (c/. Ussher "Birds of Ireland," 

 I). 385). 



