48 APPENDIX: NO. XLI. 
of the bird’s body; and it returns again with the most steady intre- 
pidity imaginable. My friend, who got one thump, took constant 
and special care to avoid a second ; it is only necessary to carry a 
ramrod or other stick over the head, to prevent the swoops taking 
full effect. The protection afforded to it lasts only during good 
behaviour; when a colony is becoming too large, some of them are 
apt to begin to attack lambs; they are then doomed to the infliction 
of a battue, which is supposed to act as a warning to the survivors 
for some years to come. It is said, that only a few individuals 
acquire this bad habit, but it then grows upon them, just as in the 
Scottish Highlands, it is a single fox or eagle which gets into the 
way of carrying off lambs, but which evil disposed one gives a bad 
name to, and is the death of many of its innocent brethren. 
The Skua is one of the birds of which a certain number of heads 
is required to be given in by every inhabitant annually, by an old 
law or custom, which reminds one of the mode in which Egbert 
endeavoured to extirpate wolves in Britain. I do not know whether 
this is now strictly enforced, but I have seen the people collect 
heads, when they had an opportunity, either of this bird, or of the 
Raven, or the Great Black-backed Gull, that is, when they were ready 
killed for them. I heard that several heads of the Hooded Crow, 
or Richardson’s Skua, might be substituted for one of the larger 
birds. Skuir is the Faroese name of the bird. Richardson’s Skua 
is called Shooi, which I was told has the same meaning as the Greek 
dvaBoros; Scouti allan is the somewhat similar name, but as in cases 
I have before mentioned, one with a different meaning, used in the 
north of Britain. Scouwti is said to have reference in Gaelic to its 
dirty mode of feeding, allan being a common name for several 
birds, as Allan Yasker is the Osprey or Fishing Allan. In Faroe, 
Richardson’s Skua is also, and more commonly, called Kjegvi ; 
sailors know it as the Boatswain. 
I have to record a very interesting fact with respect to the Fulmar, 
Procellaria glacialis, which has recently adopted some of the cliffs 
of the Faroe Islands as a summer station. In the time of Landt, 
who wrote in 1799, it was only known to those who fished far from 
the shore, but somewhere about the year 1839 it was observed by 
the rock climbers breeding, for the first time, near Qualboe in Suderoe, 
and it has since much increased, and is scattered over several spots 
on the west cliffs of the islands of Skuoe and Great Dimon; in the 
latter place, the face where it builds is of great height and quite 
perpendicular, and the ledges are very small and bare. Eight or 
ten of the nests that I examined consisted of a few small fragments 
of rock lining a slight depression. The featherless abdomen “of the 
bird is hollowed into a perfect egg cup shape during incubation, so 
that the single large egg has the warmth applied to it in the most 
effectual manner. 
I will not attempt to speculate on the reason of this remarkable 
change of locality, in a bird supposed to be so constant in its attach- 
ment to certain breeding places. It is not found in Shetland or 
