294 THE GANNET 



" ... There are other larger birds, which are white, 

 which hve apart from the others in one part of the island, 

 which are very bad to attack, for they bite like dogs, and 

 are named Margaulx.^^* 



No more of the passage is about Gannets, but the journal 

 goes on to relate how Cartier's sailors found a bear " great 

 as any cow, and as white as any swan, who in their presence 

 lept into the sea," but eventually they "by main strength 

 tooke her, whose flesh was as good to be eaten as the flesh 

 of a calfe of two yeres olde." ! 



No doubt Mr. F. Lucas is right in thinking that this 

 Island of Birds must have been Funk Island, Newfoundland,! 

 for the context seems to preclude its being Bonaventure, 

 in confirmation of which it may be remarked that the map 

 shows a promontory marked " Gannet-Head " on the south 

 point of Funk Island 4 From Funk Island to Bird Rocks 

 would be about four hundred miles. If one may credit the 

 testimony of the fishermen, adds Mr. Lucas, some Gannets 

 were breeding on Funk Island so recently as about 1857, 

 but there are none now. It evidently was not a large 

 settlement in 1534. 



* " Margot " of which " Margaulx " (in the Ramusio edition it reads 

 " Margaux ") is the old plural, is still a fisherman's name for the Gannet 

 on the north coast of France ; in the neighbourhood of Boulogne it is 

 seldom that any other appellation is applied to the Gannet. See p. 18. 



t " The Auk," 1888, p. 133. 



X See " Report Nat. Mus., 1887-8," PI. LXXI. 



