252 Among the Birds in Northern Shires. 



peculiar to the place has become threatened with 

 absolute extermination! Better perhaps had we re- 

 mained silent, at least until sufficient steps had been 

 taken to secure the safety of perhaps the most in- 

 terestingr bird on the islands, if the most diminutive. 

 Collectors have taught the St. Kildan that there is 

 more wealth in the long-despised Wren than in the 

 much-vaunted and highly protected Fulmar, but the 

 source of it will prove a transient one indeed if 

 something be not quickly done for its preservation. 



It would be difficult to find, or even to imagine, 

 more grandly beautiful rock scenery than St. Kilda 

 presents. There is not, for instance, in all the 

 British Islands, a precipice approaching in magnifi- 

 cence to that of Connacher, which is formed literally 

 by the side of an island twelve hundred feet high 

 falling sheer into the Atlantic; and when we add 

 that this awful wall of rock is crowded with birds, 

 almost from foot to summit, we complete a descrip- 

 tion which has no parallel in Britain. This is but 

 one item in the grand sum total of the crags of St. 

 Kilda. It would be as hard to conceive a more 

 majestic outline of sea-crags than is formed by the 

 towering jagged summits that cut the sky-line and 

 form the long narrow sister island of Doon, forming 

 the southern horn of a most picturesque, if somewhat 

 treacherous bay, of which a spur of St. Kilda itself 

 completes the watery enclosure. The cliffs that 



