170 Proceedings of the Royal Physical Society. 



wich Naturalists' Society,* along with some accounts of other 

 Scottish Bird Haunts. 



This year — 1880 — I visited several of the outlying 

 Hebrides, and since then, I have drawn out some remarks 

 upon three of the groups visited — viz., Haskeir, off North 

 Uist, the riannen Isles, west of Lewis, and Hysgeir, off 

 Canna — the subject of the present notice, which may be con- 

 sidered as one of a series of papers upon " British Bird 

 Haunts." 



My visit to Hysgeir, off Canna, in June of the present year, 

 was a tolerably leisurely one, as I was enabled to spend 

 nearly four hours upon the rocks ; but my observations on 

 their birds, I give subject to future amendment and 

 additions, because a very large portion of my time whilst on 

 shore was spent in watching and in stalking the great grey 

 seal {Halichcerus gryphus, Fabricius), which is abundant there. 

 Of these animals and their Scottish haunts, T may have more to 

 say at a future time. Notwithstanding the time spent thus, 

 in crawling through plashes of slippery tangle and green sea- 

 weeds, often with my head and eyes in the worst possible 

 positions for extensive observation, I managed to devote 

 more than an hour and a half to a wider ramble over the 

 island, following a more erect and human-like mode of pro- 

 gression, and to form, perhaps, a tolerably comprehensive 

 idea of its resident bird life. The rocks of Hysgeir lie 

 about 6 miles south-west of the island of Canna. Upon close 

 approach one is at once struck by the wonderful regularity of 

 their basaltic structure, the whole group being composed of 

 regular pillars fitting to one another like the cells in a comb 

 of beeswax. The pillars are small — about 8 inches in 

 diameter — forming throughout the group an irregular cause- 

 way, or, where at all precipitous, steps at irregular heights, 

 providing most convenient landing-places all round its shores, 

 only slippery and awkward where tlie tangle and dulse and 

 sea-weeds adhere to them below the high tide mark. Washed 



* " The Shiant Isles and their Bird Life," to which my friend Dr Heddle, 

 of St Andrews, kindly added a "Sketch of the Geology and Mineralogy of 

 the Shiant Islands" {Trans. N. and N. N. Soc, vol. iii.), etc. 



