AILS A CRAIG HI 



number, or, rather, the space occupied with them, 

 with the unknown Gannets on Ailsa Craig. It appears 

 on inquiry that the largest Goose farm is Mr. Harrison's, at 

 Halsall, in Lancashire, where there are 8,000 Geese. Mr. 

 Harrison has obliged me with a photograph of his birds, 

 and I should say there were nearly as many Gannets seen 

 by us at Ailsa as he has Geese. It is, however, very difficult 

 to form a correct notion from a photograph, but if anyone 

 who had recently inspected the Gannets at Ailsa or the Bass 

 found a favourable opportunity of seeing one of the large 

 Goose farms, he could probably form a fairly just 

 comparison between them and the Gannets. Perhaps this 

 mode will not be thought a very good way of dealing with 

 the numbers of birds, but still it is a plan which need not 

 be set aside. 



To be on the safe side I do not propose to reckon Ailsa 

 as having more than 6,500 Gannets. Neither Mr. H. Gurney 

 nor I thought it a much larger Gannetry than that of 

 the Bass Rock, which, judging from the numbers of young 

 ones formerly taken, we rate at 6,000 only. I am well 

 aware that 6,500 is a figure much below some of the estimates 

 which have been formed of Ailsa Gannets ; for example, one 

 who knows Ailsa well, suggests as high a population of 

 Gannets as 30,000, but then these figures are hypothetical 

 and have no basis to go on, and can only be accepted as the 



