MORTALITY AMONG GANNETS 437 



remained there. But even more extraordinary than their 

 plunging into boats is the anecdote which WiUiam Borlase 

 — a naturahst of one hundred and forty years years ago — 

 tells of a Gannet which, for some reason, quitted the sea 

 to fly over Penzance, and espying some pilchards spread 

 out on a board in a fish-curing cellar, darted down upon 

 them, and with such force that its beak went through the 

 plank on which the fish were.* A similar incident happened 

 in Whitby — a Gannet descending on some herrings spread 

 out in a cellar, where it was soon captured alive — of 

 which I was told when there in 1906. 



Meshed in Nets. — Gannets are not infrequently meshed in 

 nets, of which some account has been already given (see pp. 

 107, 408). WiUiam Thompson, an eminent Irish naturalist, 

 has given currency to a circumstantial anecdote about 

 a train of fish-nets having proved the death of no less than 

 one hundred and twenty-eight Gannets, near Ailsa Craig. 

 The story, which may be exaggerated, rests on the 

 good faith of one Jolin Coulter, a fisherman, who 

 removed the Gannets from the nets, and who informed 

 the postmaster of Ballantrae that '' he took ninety -four 

 gannets from one net, at a single haul, a few years 

 ago. The net was about sixty fathoms longf — a cod-net 



* " Journal of Tlie Royal Institution of Cornwall," 1804, Sup., pp. 44. 

 t 360 feet. 



