318 THE GANNET 



" Frequens est cuniculis, avibusque marinis, eoque 

 maxime genere anserum, quas Solanas vocamus."* 



Incidentally it may be remarked that the Gannet is not 

 one of the Isle of Man birds mentioned by Ray and 

 Willugliby in their chapter on Remarkable Isles where 

 Sea-fowl build. t 



For the present Lundy Island must be reckoned among 

 the abandoned breeding-places, but no one can doubt that 

 a nesting site known to have been occupied for 636 years, 

 and in all probability far longer, would again be tenanted 

 by birds so attached to their island homes as Gannets, 

 if they were given adequate protection. 



Scotland. — On the Scottish coast it seems possible that 

 Gannets once nested on a few of the western islands, where 

 they are now no longer met with, but the evidence about it 

 is so meagre as to be almost worthless. Yet it must be 

 remembered that young Gannets were eagerly sought after 

 for food, and nowhere are such birds more easily driven 

 from a breeding-place than on a small inhabited island, 

 where the people would naturally take them. Accordingly 

 we must not too hastily dismiss the testimony of Dean 

 Donald Munro, that useful historian who visited the Western 

 Isles in 1549, to the effect that at that period 



* Lib. i., xxxiv. 



t " Ornithologia " (1676), chapter VII., p. 16. 



