454 SULA BASSANA. 
two eggs. I shot a Lesser Black-backed Gull, and saw many 
Kittiwakes and J believe some Herring-Gulls. I saw a White-winged 
Guillemot [Teisty] and plenty of Common Guillemots, also Puffins, 
and I believe the Razorbill breeds there, but all these birds are in 
greater plenty on the Isle of May. I was very lucky in meeting with 
a most agreeable party [of visitors] with whom I dined. Only two 
or three Geese were to be shot. 
§ 5175. Twelve-—Bass Rock, 30 April, 1850. “J. W.” 
On the 30th of April, 1850, I visited the Bass Rock and took 
twenty-four eggs of the Solan Goose, about half of which I gave to 
Dr. Frere, at sixpence each, the cost price. Mr. Marcet* was with 
me. We each shot a Goose with ball, with permission from George 
Adams the keeper. Some of the eggs, he said, had been some time 
sat upon, but all those we took were quite fresh. They appear to be 
soiled in the act of laying, as we could find none quite clean. At 
this time there was very little nest ; but the birds continue adding to 
it. Later in the year Adams told me that ail the nests we robbed 
had eggs in them again, but this does not prove that the same birds 
breed again. 
I visited the rock again the first week in August in the ‘ Pharos,’ 
the steamer of the Commissioners of Northern Lights, with a party 
of Members of the British Association. We had been over the Bass 
Rock lighthouse, and came down by the Isle of May and afterwards 
went to the Inch Keith. On this occasion I made Mr. H. E. 
Strickland’s acquaintance”. He remarked that the young Solan Geese 
were very like Dodos. The people were soon going to commence 
catching the young, though one or two that I saw were only just 
hatched. 
On the 8th of March, 1851, I rowed round and landed on the Bass, 
it being a beautiful day and an early season. Nearly all the Gannets 
1 (This seems to have been Mr. William Marcet, of Genevese extraction, at that 
time a fellow-student of Mr. Wolley’s at Edinburgh, who subsequently became 
celebrated as a highly scientific physician in London. He died ona visit to Egypt 
in 1900, aged 71. See his obituary in the Year-book of the Royal Society for 
1903 (pp. 242-246).—Ep. ] 
> [As already stated (Memoir, p. xvii), Mr. Wolley had for more than two years 
been in correspondence with Mr, Strickland on the subject of the Dodo, but this 
was their first meeting.—Eb. } 
