MORTALITY AMONG GANNETS 441 



Channel in February, 1824, was due. Particulars of this 

 disaster have been handed down by M. Baillon, an accurate 

 French ornithologist, who saw the dead birds lying spread 

 along the shore, and testifies to there having been about 

 two hundred Gannets, with some five hundred Razorbills, 

 Gulls, etc., on an extent of four miles, near the mouth of 

 the Somme.* 



This was in February, and it is generally in the winter 

 that sea-birds are washed up in this way, but Professor 

 Macgillivray alludes to a mortality among Gannets in the 

 Hebrides in summer, which is much more unusual. f J 



Supposed Victims to Disease. — Every living organism is 

 liable to disease, but in the Gannet it has never been 

 medically certified, except in so far as emaciation 



* I quote from Degland's " Ornithologie Europeenne (11., p. 348) ; the 

 incident is not mentioned in Baillon's " Catalogue des mammiferes 

 oiseaux, etc., d'Abbeville," 1833. On this same coast Puffins also 

 sometimes perish by thousands. Baillon le pere ecrivait de Montreuil-sur- 

 Mer, le 16 avril, 1781, " Le vent du nord nous a envoye cet hiver des 

 milliers de Macareux morts et noyes dans la mer" ("Rev. Fr. d'orn.," 

 1911, p. 123). 



Probably in Harris, where his youth was spent (MacGillivray's 

 " British Birds," V., p. 414). 



+ Mr. L. E. Taylor relates that on June 17th, 1906, he found the beach 

 at iluizenberg, Cape Colony, lined with thousands of heads and wings of 

 the South African Gannet, Sida capensis (L) (" .Journal South Afr. Orn. 

 Union," 1909, p. 84) : most likely the effect of rough weather, after 

 which shore-crabs and sand-hoppers may have disposed of their bodies as 

 they lay on the shore. 



