454 



THE GANNET 



along the ledges as best they could, with or without a rope, and strike all 

 the young ones they could reach on the back of the head or neck with a 

 cudgel, which was preferred to a bill-hook. It must have been cruel 

 work, for I understand their vitality was very great ; but the facility 

 with which their wounds subsequently healed (see page 85), if they were 



not killed on the spot, 

 made some small 

 amends. In the photo- 

 graph a party of Ice- 

 landers, who have 

 landed on a skerry of 

 the Vestmann Islands, 

 are seen at work club- 

 bing young Gannets. 

 It was taken in 1898 

 by Sir Eustace Gurney, 

 when visiting the Vest- 

 mann Eyjar with Mr. 

 N. Annandale. For such dangerous business (as it undoubtedly was vipon 

 the Bass Rock and Ailsa), the climber needed to be a man of imdaunted 

 nerve, for he held his life in his hands. One who had tried it, confessed 

 to me that there had been moments when the stench and the rays of the 

 sun and the feeling of giddiness, had been almost too much for him ; but 

 he had passed through the ordeal unscathed. At the date of Ray's visit 

 to the Bass with Francis Willughby (1661), baskets were employed for 

 making the descent ("Ornithology," p. 19), of capacity enough to hold 

 a boy, but afterwards these were superseded by ropes, which were 

 more suited for the work, and safer also. When enough young 

 Gannets had been killed for local use and for the Edinburgh weekly 

 market supply, the men carried their booty to some overhanging point, 

 and all having been collected, proceeded to jiitcli them one by one into 

 the sea below, where a boat was waiting at a respectable distance, to 

 row in and pick them up. The men always selected a calm day for 

 choice for their chmbing operations, and it must not be immediately 

 after rain, which would make the cliffs slippery. It was also im- 

 portant to see the position of the boat before beginning to throw the 

 Gannets over, or some might drop into it and possibly sink it. Although 

 at the Bass Rock the young ones used to be taken in August, at some 



