158 THE GANNRT 



mind is proved by his subsequently giving ten leagues as 

 its distance from Hoy.* 



3. The next to quote is the Rev. George Low, who says 

 in his "Fauna Orcadensis "t (1813): ''The Solan Goose 

 breeds in none of the Orkney Isles, as far as I can learn. 

 .... The nearest land to Orkney where the Solan Goose 

 breeds is a rock called the Stack of Soliskerry, where many 

 hundreds breed every year, as the seals do on the Skerry. 

 Some time ago a ship went from this place thither, 'and 

 returned with a great quantity of young Solans, the feathers 

 of which were good, as they were not near so oily as those 

 of the older sea-fowl ; the birds were eaten, but were very 

 wild and fishy-tasted, with a strong smell." 



Mr. Harvie-Brown considers the Stack to be " certainly 

 one of the most inaccessible of all our Scottish islets, the 

 difficulty of landing lying not only in its open and exposed 

 situation, but in the fierce rdst, or rush, of tideway which 

 flows round its base." Mr. Harvie-Brown has tried to land 

 on this dangerous and unapproachable Stack three times, 

 but in vain, but he has sailed very near it. He heard on 

 good authority that Joseph Dunn, who was formerly a 



* i.e., thirty miles, see the " Caledonian Zoolofiy," prefixed to Lightfoot's 

 "Flora Scotica," 1777, p. 46. 



f p. 148; Low's "Fauna" was published eighteen years after its 

 author's death by Dr. W. E. Leach, who says the MS. was revised by 

 Pennant; accordingly it may have been from that source that the latter's 

 information was derived. 



