Irish Ornithology. 405 



at the entrance of Waterford Harbour. It is rather more 

 than two hundred acres in extent, and is a pile of granite 

 rocks, which slopes gently down to a shingly coast towards 

 the south-east, but drops more or less precipitously nearly 

 two hundred feet into the sea towards the north-west. There 

 is a farm of about sixty acres on the sunny side of the island, 

 which is cultivated by an Irish family, who are, for the most 

 part, sublimely indifferent to the hundreds of thousands of 

 birds which breed in the cliffs. Outside the farm the island 

 is covered by grass cropped short by sheep and rabbits, and 

 gay with tufts of pink thrift, or variegated with patches, some 

 of them acres in extent, of intensely blue hyacinths, which 

 suggest the former presence of forest, though every trace of 

 a tree-stump, if it ever was there, has disappeared. On the 

 upper portions of the steep side there is plenty of peat be- 

 tween the granite rocks, but lower down the cliffs are bare, 

 with numerous caves and ledges, and in one or two places 

 there is an escarpment which shows a deep deposit of boulder- 

 clay full of angular rocks of all sizes, and resting upon a bed 

 of rounded stones, which is obviously an old coast-line, some 

 fourteen feet above the present high-water mark. 



I suppose there must have been at least 60,000 Puffins 

 (Fratercuta arctica) on the island. The colony was more 

 than two miles long, and many yards in width. In many 

 places the grass on the surface was entirely worn away by the 

 tramping of myriads of red feet, whilst the peat was so honey- 

 combed by the burrows of the birds, that it continually gave 

 way if any attempt was made to walk over it. The Puffins 

 were ridiculously tame, and on one occasion I stood for at 

 least five minutes within six feet of a rock upon which twenty- 

 four of these birds remained in full view. The edge of the 

 cliff was lined with row after row of them, sometimes the sea 

 for acres in extent was thickly sprinkled over with them, and 

 occasionally the air seemed to be full of them flying about in 

 regiments ; nevertheless nearly as many more must have been 

 sitting in their burrows, and only took flight when we alarmed 

 them by walking across the colony. 



The number of Kittiwakes (Rissa tridactyla) was pos- 



