300 THE GANNET 



in ornithology. Although he did not himself actually land 

 upon them, he was at any rate the first naturalist to gaze 

 on the great bird hive, and see the seven species of sea-birds 

 which bred there. The freshness which memoranda written 

 on the spot always possess makes his Labrador journal* — 

 which was not printed until long after his death, and in 

 which all particulars of the expedition in the schooner 

 " Ripley " are narrated — even better reading than the 

 account in his subsequently published " Ornithological 

 Biography. "t 



Another good account of Bird Rocks, and their Gannets 

 and other sea-fowl, is that by Dr. Henry Bryant, who is 

 entitled to the credit of being the first naturalist to land 

 upon them. J His visit was paid in 1860, twenty-seven 

 years after Audubon's, and he, amazed at the number of 

 the Gannets, thought that there might be 150,000 of them, 

 which was probably reckoning far too many. He writes : 

 " The northerly or highest half of the summit of Gannet 

 Rock, and all the ledges on its sides of sufficient width, the 

 whole upper part of the pillar-hke portion of the Little 

 Bird, and the greater part of the remaining portion of this 



* " Audubon, and his Jom-nals," by Maria R. Audubon and Elliott 

 Coues (1898). 



t Vol. IV., p. 222. 



+ See " Proc. Boston Soc. Nat. Hist.," VIIT., p. 65. 



