42 Mr. Fohn Flower. 
8.—ON A PECULIARITY, HITHERTO UNDESCRIBED, IN THE 
BrEAST-BONE OF THE GANNET (SULA BASSANA). 
By the President, Joun Fiower, M.A., F.Z.S. 
[Read April 16th, 1879.] 
When at Stornaway, in the Outer Hebrides, in August, 
1876, I had an opportunity, for the first time, of seeing Gannets 
fishing, and a very remarkable and astonishing performance 
it seemed to me to be. This bird flies over the sea at a 
considerable distance from the water and as soon as it dis- 
covers a fish it turns in the air, sometimes first mounting a 
short distance higher, and then giving one or two powerful 
strokes with its wings, it flies straight downwards, closes its 
wings, and drops into the water like a stone, and with great 
velocity. It seems very rarely to miss its aim, for it almost 
invariably reappears in about 15 seconds with the fish in its 
mouth. The height from which the plunge is taken is said to 
vary according to the depth at which the fish happens to be 
in the water, the deeper the fish the greater being the height 
to which the bird ascends before turning to commence its 
plunge, the object of the increased height being, of course, to 
take the bird deeper into the water. The whole proceeding 
is a very striking one, as the Gannet is a large and heavy bird. 
The length of a full-grown one is about 3-ft. 2-in., and its 
weight is about 7-lbs., and yet it enters the water with hardly 
any splash. Whilst watching the Gannets at Stornaway it struck 
me that there must be some very remarkable provision in their 
structure to enable them to take these tremendous plunges with 
impunity especially in rough weather. In the following December 
the body of a Gannet was sent to me, and it was while dissect- 
ing that that I first became aware of the curious and beautiful 
arrangement which I am about to describe to you, but I was not 
aware till a few months ago that this arrangement has never 
yet been described; it seems, strangely enough, to have been 
entirely overlooked. During the plunge the neck of the bird is 
stretched straight out from the body. The long, strong, and 
wedge-shaped beak first enters the water, and makes a hole 
through which passes the head and neck, and, as the neck 
gradually increases in thickness as it approaches the body, and 
finally passes into the body much in the same way as the 
neck of a hock bottle passes into the body of the bottle, it is 
obvious that there would be nothing to offer any great amount 
of resistance to the water if it were not for the wings of the 
bird. ‘These are necessarily large to sustain so heavy a bird, 
and they measure over six feet from tip to tip. When folded 
