AND NEIGHBOURHOOD. 221 



that I can never forget, my only regret being that I 

 was incapable of any attempt to transfer the happy 

 chance to paper in colours. I do not, from my own 

 experience, consider the Gannet as capable of pro- 

 tracted submarine pursuit ; at all events, out of the 

 hundreds of these birds that I have observed engaged 

 in fishing, I never remember to have known one to 

 remain submerged for more than a few seconds, and 

 I certainly never saw a Gannet " go below " from a 

 sitting position on the surface of the water. Many 

 of these birds were plunging around us throughout 

 a fine moonlight night in August 1856, as we lay 

 becalmed at a short distance to the north of Ferrol. 



It is stated in the work to which I have above 

 referred that from 2000 to 3000 Gannets are some- 

 times taken in one season upon the island of North 

 Barra, and that the average Gannet-harvest on the 

 Bass Rock amounts to about 800 birds. The editor 

 was informed in this latter locality that the taste for 

 these birds as food was dying out (I can speak from 

 personal experience as to their extreme nastiness) ; 

 the price ranged from eightpence to a shilling each ; 

 the fat is boiled down into oil, and the feathers, 

 after being baked, are used for stuffing beds. The 

 Gannet passes through many changes of plumage 

 before attaining the full adult dress in the sixth 

 year of its existence ; these changes are admirably 

 illustrated by Mr. Ed. Neale in ' Rough Notes,' by 

 the late E. T. Booth, in whose garden, at Brighton, 

 a pair of these birds nested in 1879 and 1880, and, 

 in the latter year, hatched out and reared a solitary 

 young one. 



Before sending this article to the printers, I 

 received a note from Mr. Richard Tryon referring 



