ST. KILDA 117 



on to this island, then called Hirth.* Neither does Hector 

 Boethius (1527),t to whom we owe the first notice of 

 Gannets at Ailsa, mention birds at St. Kilda, but he alludes to 

 the sheep. He says : " This last He is namit Hirtha, quhilk 

 in Irsche, is callit ane scheip [sheep] ; for in this He is gret 

 nowmer of scheip, ilk ane gretar than ony buk," which, in 

 respect of the size of their horns, was afterwards noticed by 

 Martin. Bishop Lesley (1578) and John Monipennie (1603) 

 take a certain amount of notice of St. Kilda, but they 

 again do not allude to its birds. In 1549 Donald Monro 

 gives a fairly long account of St. Kilda,:]: but he had not 

 been there, and his information was very imperfect ; all 

 he has to say about the birds is that falcons and wild 

 fowls build in this fair isle, and that McCloyd " his stewart, 

 went there for dewties in miell (? meal) and reisted (dried)§ 

 mutton, wyld foullis reisted, and selchis (seals)." With 

 Sir Robert Sibbald it is different, for it can but be St. Kilda 

 that he had in his mind when in his " Scottia Illustrata " 

 (1684), in speaking of the Gannet, he wrote : " Non solum 



* Lib. II., cap. X. 



t " The Cosmographe and Description of Albion." BoUenden's edition, 

 XLVII. 



X No. 158 of Monro's list. 



§ Jamieson, who qiiotos this passage, interprets "reist" to dry by the 

 heat of the sim. "Scottish Diet." 



