118 THE GANNET 



autem in Insula Bassa, sed & in Alisd & aliis ex 

 iEbudibus [Hebrides] nidulantur."* 



1. The first authority on St. Kilda birds, and a good one, 

 too, was Martin Martin. He hved in Skye, and was tutor 

 and estate factor to the McLeod family, to whom the island 

 then belonged, as it does now. Mr. J. Mackenzie tells me that 

 in the vouchers for his salary still in existence at Dunvegan 

 Castle, Martin is described as " Governor." He visited St. 

 Kilda on the occasion of the Rev. John Campbell being ap- 

 pointed minister to the islanders, and has left posterity a 

 little work of 158 pages of the highest interest to naturalists, 

 entitled " A Late Voyage to St. Kilda," hy M. Martin, Gent., 

 12mo (1698), with a map, of which a facsimile is given. f A 

 second edition of the " Voyage " was published in 1716, a 

 third in 1749, and a fourth in 1753. I have had no oppor- 

 tunity of collating these editions, but I learn from Mr. 

 W. H. Mullens that the fourth edition, though stated to be 

 " corrected," is, as far as the birds are concerned, practically 



* In his " History of the Sheriffdoms of Fife and Kinross," published 

 1710, Sibbald says there are Gannets "in the desart Isles, adjacent to 

 Hirta, called St. Kilda's Isle, and in a desart Isle belonging to Orkney," 

 but Sibbald wrote this twelve years after Martin's work — to be mentioned 

 next — was published. 



I Martin's map, as well as the facsimile of the title-j^age to his 

 " Voyage." are here borrowed from an appreciative article by Mr. W. H. 

 Mullens in "British Birds" (1908. p. 173) 



