90 A bout tJie FeatJiercd Folk. 



Gulls, Gannets, Puffins, Guillemots, 

 Cormorants, and Ducks. It is the 

 breeding season, the season of 

 business, pleasure, hurry, and work ; 

 and there is little left of silence 

 or loneliness in Canna. 



The folk of the cliffs have their 

 own notions of rights and wrongs ; 

 their own courtesies and alas ! 

 treacheries ; their own laws, which, 

 like those of the Medes and Persians, 

 alter not. 



Upon the flat grass-grown top of 

 a detached "stack" rock, with a 

 vast chasm between it and the 

 island, the black-backed Gulls build. 

 A hundred feet away, on the sheer 

 face of the precipice, the Kittiwakes 

 have their colony. Where the 

 basalt is broken into crumbling 

 slopes, the Puffins make their 

 burrows amongst the thrifts and the 

 sea-grasses. 



The Eider-ducks claim as their 

 share the smooth round boulders 



