146 Letters, Extracts, Notices, ^c. 



sionally visited by a schooner for gathering eggs and obtaining 

 turtle. The eggs are sold in the market for cooking and 

 eating, and are called Boobies' eggs. It was blowing a 

 strong " trade/' and I had some difficulty in landing on 

 S.E. Island, and was quite unable to do so on the lee side, 

 but, strange to say, succeeded on the weather side, there 

 being a reef between the island and the breakers, which 

 formed a natural breakwater. To leeward of this I found 

 a small sheltered spot where I and my two companions, 

 Lieut. Edward Hunter-Blair and Lieut. Douglas Nicholson, 

 landed. My boat's crew had brought tubs and buckets to 

 put the eggs in, and we brought back sufficient for all hands. 

 The island was partly covered with a low bush, about 18 

 inches high. Underneath and in the open, on the bare 

 ground, without any sign of a nest or even of a made hollow, 

 and often so close together that the birds were almost 

 touching, were seated thousands of Sooty Terns, all with 

 their heads the same way, i. e. all pointing to the wind. 



There was a comparatively small number of Noddies 

 [Anous stolidus), and they usually kept together, though in 

 the midst of the Sooties. Their nests — which were a shape- 

 less mass of seaweed and rubbish and quite flat, without any 

 hollow in the centre that was appreciable, and which usually 

 had either stones or shells in addition to the single egg — 

 were usually placed on top of the low bushes and sometimes 

 on the ground; but a nest was always used. The birds, 

 both Sooty and Noddy Terns^ were very tame, and often we 

 had to touch a bird with one foot to make it move off the 

 nest, and it would then flutter off a few feet and return 

 again immediately we moved away. All the time we were 

 on the island tens of thousands of the Terns were flying 

 round screaming, close over our heads ; and they became so 

 bold that, to prevent them flying into our faces, we had to 

 continually drive them off with sticks. I had particularly 

 requested my companions and the men of my boat to be 

 very careful and let me at once know if in any case more 

 than a single egg had been deposited in any nest; but no 

 such case was discovered. In all cases, both of Sooty and 

 Noddy Terns, only a single egg was found. 



