82 SEA-BIRDS 



century recovery is largely due to the relaxation of his predation, to 

 the control of it, or to positive protective measures. In the history of 

 the gannet man appears in the different roles of mass-destroyer, harv- 

 ester, conservator and protector. When he has indulged in wanton 

 massacre of gannets, such as at the Bird Rocks, probably at Little 

 Skellig in its early days, the world population has seriously suffered. 

 By thoughtless and heedless killing man has extinguished at least 

 four colonies; Gannet Rock, Grand Manan (1871), Gannet Rock, 

 Yarmouth, Nova Scotia (1883), the Perroquet Islands, N. shore 

 Gulf of St. Lawrence (1887) and Lundy off the Devon coast (1909). 

 He has endangered the colonies at Grassholm, Little Skellig and 

 Bird Rocks at certain periods of their history. By mass destruction 

 man reduced the gannet population of the world by about two-thirds 

 in sixty years. 



At certain colonies, however, man has harvested gannets, their 

 eggs, and their young for his own use, apparently without endangering 

 the population. This applies to Ailsa Craig (Firth of Clyde) continu- 

 ously up to about 1880; to the Bass Rock (Firth of Forth) up to 1885; 

 to St. Kilda up to 1 910; to Sule Stack (west of Orkney) intermittently; 

 to Eldey (Iceland) up to 1939; to Sula Sgeir (north of Hebrides), 

 Mykines (Faeroes) and the Westmann Islands (Iceland) up to the 

 present day. 



There is no doubt that at the majority of these colonies man has 

 acted as an unconscious conservator. At Mykines and in the West- 

 manns the inhabitants are conscious conserv^ators, for they never 

 over-crop, and set an upper limit to their bag before killing. It 

 seems true, however, that as Sula Sgeir man has sometimes over- 

 cropped, and only the intervention of bad weather and wars has 

 kept the raiders (from Ness in Lewis) away in some years, and allowed 

 the colony to recover. 



So the gannet is now increasing; and there is no indication that it 

 will not continue to do so. In the long run, it is likely to be food- 

 supply that controls the numbers of the gannets, provided man con- 

 tinues to leave them alone. There is no evidence that this supply is 

 stretched in any way, anywhere in the gannet's range, at present. 



We append on page 83 a list of the world's gannet colonies, with the 

 approximate numbers of their nests, in 1939, and of the east Atlantic 

 colonies in 1949. 



On the Atlantic sea-board man now begins to play the role of 

 conscious conservator, but he has not yet assumed it everywhere; 



