140 THE GANNET 



Craig might be taken away from the St. Kilda group 

 without the population on its three great Gannet stacks, 

 Borrera, Lii and Armine, being sensibly diminished.* 

 This sounds a bold assertion, but Professor Newton, who 

 accompanied him on five of these expeditions, gives it the 

 sanction of his approval, by adding in the passage just 

 quoted, " I am prepared to believe that there may be more 

 Gannets there [i.e., on the three stacks] than in all the 

 rest of the world beside. "f At first this may seem to some 

 readers an inordinate supposition, but it is confirmed by 

 what others who have been to St. Kilda tell us, and in 

 proof of that it is only necessary to cite the testimony of such 

 observers as John Macgillivray, Harvie-Brown, Elwes, 

 Mackenzie, Kearton, Wigles worth, Dixon, Heathcote, 

 Milner,} and others, who have been to St. Kilda, and written 

 about its Gannets. The latest ornithologist to visit St. Kilda 

 with whom I have had any communication is Mr. 0. G. 

 Pike, who was there in 1908. Writing as to the serried 

 ranks of Gannets which dot every part of Stack Lii, he says 



* Quoted from " Ootheea Wolleyana " (TI., p. 456). 



t t.c, p. 457. 



J W. Macgillivray, " British Birds," V., p. 414 ; J. A. Harvie- 

 Brown, "A Fauna of the Outer Hebrides," 1888, p. 94; H, J. Elwes, 

 "Ibis," 1869, p. oO; Neil Mackenzie, "Annals Scottish N. H.," 1905, p. 

 145; Richard Kearton, "With Nature and a Camera," 1898, p. 90; J. 

 Wiglesworth, "St. Kilda and its Birds," p. 48 ; C. Dixon, "Ibis,"' 1885, 

 p. 91 ; Heathcote, " St. Kilda," 1900; Milner, " Zoologist," 1848, p. 2058. 



