CHAPTER X. 



ABANDONED BREEDING-PLACES. 



Former Breeding- Places, no longer inhabited — Alleged Breed- 

 ing-Places of the Gannet in England — in Scotland — in Ireland 

 — on the coast of Canada. 



Former Breeding- Places of Ganyiets. — None can fail to 

 observe that sea-birds are very constant to the haunts they 

 have once adopted, and this is emphatically true of the 

 Gannet. But few changes have taken place — in historic 

 times at any rate — in the nurseries of this home-abiding 

 species, all of which, it will be remembered, are on islands. 

 I think it may be said that but for the interference of man, 

 in dispossessing the Gannets of some of their abodes, there 

 would have been no abandonment of breeding-sites to 

 record. Nor has any volcanic action ever dispossessed them 

 of their island homes, as has happened once at least in the 

 case of Sula serrator."^ 



Englajid. — Judging from the " Itinerarium," or journal 



* See BuUer's " Birds of New Zealand," ii., p. 179. 



