6 SOME ACCOUNT OF THE MUTTON BIKDS, ETC. 



of things with regret, how easily the island could be saved 

 from the destruction which is impending. 



But to return to numbers. Little Dog Island is in private 

 hands on a Government lease. Three families each take 

 some 27,000 birds off patches of 40 acres in each case. To 

 those interested in the condition of the ground for walking 

 I make the following calculation : — On 40 acres here there 

 must have been 40,000 holes occupied by birds, besides 

 deserted nests. One party on Big Dog Island collected 

 last year 40,000 birds. This island does carry cattle, but it 

 is quite different to the other rookeries. There is a large 

 wood at one end, and the ground is a great deal harder, the 

 birds breeding only at one end of the island. Babel Island 

 probably contains more birds than any of these other places. 

 It is at the S.E. of Flinders. But the snakes are so terrible 

 here that even the half-castes do not like working on it. Two 

 families, however, have attempted it this year. If we take the 

 birds on these four little islands we shall be below the mark 

 when we compute that on any night in February there are 

 two million six hundred thousand sooty petrels asleep upon 

 them. 



Perhaps it will interest the members of the Society to hear 

 of another feature of these islands. I remarked that no one 

 on Chappeli Island was ever seen without a stick or a gun. 

 It was an ominous sign, betokening the presence of snakes. 

 These creatures do not live apparently on mutton birds, but 

 on mice, which abound there. The young men spend Sunday 

 morning sometimes in killing snakes. Two parties the other 

 day started out to see how many they could get — one party 

 brought in 100, the other 70. Nor did any one in the islands 

 to whom I mentioned this think it an extraordinary case. 

 One man, old Mr. Smith, the half-caste, told me that his 

 party one year threw into a heap the snakes they killed in 

 the two months in the course of their work, and that they 

 numbered 600. When you consider that a man in his prime 

 can take 1,000 birds out of 1,000 holes, in any of which there 

 may be snakes, it indicates the nerve that is needed for this 

 industry. As a matter of fact they rarely touch a snake by 

 accident. There are sure signs of their presence; nor are 

 they often in the holes where the young birds are; and 

 these inhabited holes have also their signs. At the same 

 time a girl of 16 pulled out two snakes in one day a year or 

 two ago ; but, then, she was inexperienced, Sleeping on the 

 ground among the bushes on Chappeli Island on that Sunday 

 in a hut without a door, and open on every side along the 

 ground, I was not surprised when, after an hour, I heard my 

 companion mutter, " I am too nervous to sleep here : I am 

 off to the boat." For my own part, though I braved it out, 

 I was glad when the first streaks of dawn appeared in the east. 



