438 THE GANNET 



wrought in a 5-inch scale. The birds brought up the 

 net, with its sinkers and fish, to the top, where such 

 as were not drowned, made a sad struggle to escape. 

 There were four nets in this train ; but the above 

 ninety -four were in one of the nets, and there were 

 thirty -four additional birds in the other part of the train ; 

 being one hundred and twenty-eight gannets in all."* 



Sometimes taken with Hooks. — Sometimes Gannets get 

 themselves entrapped by heedlessly swallowing fish which 

 have been hooked. This is not an uncommon circumstance 

 when Kerry fishermen are pulling their ling and cod lines 

 off the Skelligs, and other birds are sometimes 

 hooked also. Martin has a reference to fish-hooks being 

 found in the stomachs of Gannets which had swallowed 

 and flo\Mi away with themf ; but lines are not so easily 

 broken nowadays, and great force would have to be 

 exerted by a hooked Gannet to tear itself away. Mr. W. E. 

 Clarke informs me that when he was at St. Kilda in 

 September, 1910, a steamer came in with seven Gannets 

 on board, and he ascertained that they had all been 

 caught by swallowing fish intended as baits for larger fish. 



* Cliarlesworth's " Magazine of Natural History," 18.'{8, p. 19. The 

 story is also told by Robert Gray in the ''Intellectual Observer," 1864, 

 p. 119, and by J. Gould (" Birds of Great Britain," V.). 



t " A Voyage to St. Kilda," p. 51. 



