240 THE GANNET 



value was thought to be only as a mark for sportsmen.* 

 Colquhoun says that there was one year when the whole 

 west front of the Rock was depopulated.! Of this unfair 

 shooting a strange tale is told in St. John's " Natural 

 History and Sport in Moray, "J 1863. This sort of treat- 

 ment — which Booth also complains of — must have gone 

 on for a good many years, for when I was at the Bass in 

 1876 the lessee still bitterly resented the numbers shot after 

 the 1st August, many of them even while flying with fish 

 to their young ones, adding with emphasis that he had 

 seen the sea strewn with dead Gannets which the shooters 

 did not take the trouble to gather up after they had 

 shot them. Such wanton waste of life, whatever species 

 of bird it be, cannot be too strongly condemned. It gives 

 a few brief hours of amusement to three or four 

 individuals, but at the expense of many others with 

 better inclinations, who prefer watching the birds to 

 destroying them. Now, happily, protected by the arm 

 of the law {i.e., the "Wild Birds Protection Act," 1880) 

 during the summer months, the Gannets have been — since 

 1885 — comparatively free from molestation at, and in the 



* See Fleming, t.c, p. 405, and Jardine's " Contributions to Ornithology," 

 1850, p. 117. 



t " The Moor and tlie Loch," I., p. 274. 



X p. 204, note. 



