ST. KTLDA 131 



yet on St. Kilda itself none breed, nor on the adjacent 

 island of Soay,* nor, Mr. Harvie-Brown informs me, on 

 Levenish. 



The annual autumn raid which formerly took place on 

 the young Gannets on Borrera, Lii and Armine must have 

 been a slaughter indeed. Too helpless or too simple to move 

 out of the cragsmen's way the " gugas," as they were called, 

 sat still until a blow on the occiput from a club or a billhook 

 despatched them, and they were then collected and thrown 

 into the sea, where a boat picked up as many as were not 

 washed away by the tide. In Martin's day the number of 

 " gugas " thus collected ran into very big figures, even 

 allowing for some pardonable exaggeration in the tales of 

 the natives. Nowadays these young Gannets have an easy 

 time of it, for they are hardly molested. Even when Dr. 

 Wigles worth was at St. Kilda he found that the regular 

 raids on their great Gannet preserves had, in 1902, already 

 been discontinued by the islanders, of so little use had the 

 birds become. I am not aware that any ornithologist has 

 ever been present at one of these August raids on the 

 St. Kilda " gugas," although nearly every writer mentions 

 them, nor would a scene of devastation and carnage, such 

 as it must have been, be very attractive. 



* Dr. Wiglesworth tells us that Soay is the Petrel's island par 

 excellence. 



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