468 THE GANNET 



At St. Kilda. — In St. Kilda Gannets' grease was at one 

 time largely used, but it does not seem to have been kept 

 apart from the fat of the many other sea-birds with which 

 those islands abound. Gannets, Puffins, Guillemots, Razor- 

 bills, and Fulmars, all contributed. They were flayed, and 

 their fat peeled off in strips, or their bodies boiled down 

 together to obtain it. Some of the fat was made use of 

 by the islanders, but the greater part was packed in kegs 

 or barrels for use in the Hebrides, where it was a favourite 

 sheep-smear with the farmers, before chemicals super- 

 seded it. Very likely it was also employed by the 

 natives for human ailments, and a notable instance of 

 their belief in its curative j^ower is detailed by one John 

 Morisone, a firm supporter of its efficacy in the eighteenth 

 century, who, writing of the dwellers in small tenements 

 on North Rona, on the west coast of Scotland, says : " Of 

 the grease of those fowlls (especiallie the Solind Goose)* 

 I hey [the inhabitants of Rona Island] make an excellent 

 oyle, called the gibanirtick, which is exceeding good for 

 healing of anic sore ore wound ore cancer, either on man 

 or beast. This I myself found true by experience, by 

 applying of it to the legg of a young gentleman which had 

 been inflamed and cankered for the space of two years, 



* Which they obtained from Sulisgeir, near by, the rock described on 

 p. 150. 



