ESTIMATE OF THE NUMBER OF GANNETS 329 



Mr. T. H. Nelson says that 80,000 Guillemots' eggs are taken 

 in a season by the Flamborough Head climbers,* in an 

 ordinary year, which would be two or three layings, but 

 it is not likely that they get three-quarters of them. 

 The Rev. Neil Mackenzie states that he has seen about 

 12,400 Guillemots' eggs collected on one small island at 

 St. Kilda, and that probably not more than half of them 

 were taken by the inhabitants. f It would be easy to adduce 

 other evidence. 



Briinnich's Guillemot {Uria bruennichi, S.) is also 

 immensely numerous, but the area occupied by it is more 

 limited than the area of the Common Guillemot ( U. troile) — 

 that is, if we distinguish it from U. arra, Cass. This latter 

 is termed by Mr. H. W. Elliott the great egg-bird of the 

 North Pacific, frequenting more particularly the Prybilov 

 Islands " by millions. "{ 



At the present time the superabundance of the Puffin 

 {Fratercula arctica (L.)) has impressed itself upon many 

 observers, and, after collecting from various quarters all 

 the available evidence about it, it certainly seems as if 

 the Puffin were now the dominant species, numerically 



* " Birds of Yorkshire," IT., p. 717, corrected from 130,000 in the 

 " Errata." 



t " Annals Scot. Nat. Hiat.," 1905, p. 149. 



{ " Report on the Prybilov group [Alaska]," 1873. 



