366 THE BIRD WATCHER 
ing my dear seals, tigre was a down-dropping on my 
right trouser (workman's cords at 6s. 6d.), making 
a great splotch of as fine a colouring, almost, as I 
have seen, and ineradicable, which makes me think 
that a splendid dye might be produced from these 
berries—in fact, it was produced. Looking up, at 
once, | saw a young gull just passing over me, there 
being no other bird about—with the exception of 
puffins, which made the atmosphere. Therefore I 
felt sure it was the gull, nor do I think that Sherlock 
Holmes, with a similar clue and a sound knowledge 
of puffins, would have concluded otherwise. Then, 
too, side by side with these droppings, I had lately 
been finding pellets such as birds habitually disgorge, 
formed generally of a mass of the skins and seeds of 
these same berries, but sometimes containing a 
certain number of them intact, or but slightly 
bruised. Some of these had seemed to me too large 
for any bird smaller than a herring- or lesser black- 
backed-gull, and latterly I had found them mixed 
with the broken shells of mussels, and other shell- 
fish such as gulls eat, but which skuas, I believe, do 
not, or, at any rate, not asa rule. 
Some of these pellets, by the way, made very 
curious objects. I have taken a few as specimens, 
but I regret that others, still more curious, formed of 
broken pieces of crab-shell, coagulated together into 
a globular form, which two years ago were very 
plentiful on the island, I have not this year been 
able to find. I would here suggest that a collection 
