18 JILL!- SCIENTIFIC ANb FIELb \A TL'RALISTs' CLUC. 



Gull's modus operandi is to dig its bill through an egg, fly out 

 to sea with it, sucking the contents out as it goes, and then 

 drop the empty shell. When once they have commenced the 

 habit they seldom leave the cliff as long as eggs are to be 

 had. The Jackdaw, being possessed of feebler weapons, 

 employs more guile. His way is to roll the eggs off the 

 ledges and then fly down and share the spilt contents with 

 his relatives below. J. Hodgson tells me that he has seen a 

 Jackdaw deliberately roll several eggs from a ledge, watching 

 them as they fell down the cliff, and then fly down to a lower 

 ledge to repeat the process, always keeping an eye upon the 

 descending egg to mark where its contents were scattered. 



The " unnatural " enemy of the Guillemot is man. In our 

 part of the world he confines his attention to the eggs and 

 does not, like the men of the Outer Hebrides and St. Kilda, 

 snare the sitting birds for food. Probably he would despise 

 such provender, though it is said that the breast of the bird 

 is by no means to be ignored. The industry of climbing 

 (locally known as "dimming") is an old and an honourable 

 one in the villages of Flamborough, Bempton, and Buckton, 

 affording a comfortable living for some six weeks each year 

 to over a dozen men. The Yorkshireman would never dream 

 of going about his cliffs without ropes, and looks upon 

 anyone who is fool enough to do so as little short of a 

 madman.* 



In the Shetlands, Dr. Saxbv tells us, that about the 

 middle of the eighteenth century it was thought a disgrace 

 to die anywhere but on the banks, i.e., rocks. Such a thing 

 as a rope was never used. Probably the generally loose 

 and crumbling nature of the chalk rock is accountable for 

 the horror with which our Yorkshireman regards the notion 

 of climbing in any way but suspended by ropes from the 

 top of the cliff. From the recollections of Edward Hodgson, 

 extending' back nearly fifty years, 1 am able to supply a 

 history of climbing as carried on at Bempton. When a 

 boy, his father used to take him out to coil up the ropes 

 on the cliff top. In those days only two men used to go 

 out, the one being let down and pulled up by the other, and 



* In the course of my attempts in this direction I have aroused no 

 little astonishment and .some wrath by my supposed foolhardiness. I 

 have been likened to a rat (with an adjective) running' about the rocks, 

 and one Sunday morning', after an arduous climb up some very loose 

 rock, on arriving at the top who should meet me but my old friend 

 Ned Hodgson, with his grandson in one hand and his " bonny black- 

 thorn " in the other. Shaking this latter at me, he exclaimed, "Eh! 

 .\ ad a good mahnd te warm yer." 



