SEA-BIRDS' EGGS. 43 



a corvorant to the bottom ; so there were four, as we sup- 

 posed, quietly waiting our return. Emboldened by this 

 success, we proceeded more than a mile along the top of 

 the cliff, continually peeping over. We discovered two 

 nests of a gull (perhaps the herring -gull), each with three 

 eggs, of an olive-brown colour, with darker spots: the 

 nests are made of dried grass and fern. The fishermen 

 told us that these gulls will lay three eggs again, if the 

 first three are taken, and three more when the second 

 three are taken, but no more than this, nine being the 

 whole stock for one year. But the greatest curiosity we 

 observed was the nestless and solitary egg of the guille- 

 mot, balanced, as if by a geometrician, on the bare rock, 

 and looking as though the least puff of wind would blow it 

 off its station into the sea.* We learned from the fisher- 

 men, and some boys of the neighbourhood, that the puffins 

 never expose their eggs, like the corvorants, razor-bills, 

 guillemots and gulls, but lay them at the end of long 

 holes, which they hollow out of the softer parts of the rock. 

 We bought a few of these eggs to bring home ; they were 

 dirty white, with darker spots. 



Along the circuitous edge of this cliff the egg-collectors 

 plant the iron crow-bars for attaching the ropes by means 

 of which they descend. Two ropes are commonly used, 

 one goes round the body, and the other is held in the 



* " The rock-climbers assure you that the guillemot, when undisturbed, 

 never lays more than one egg; but that, if it be taken away, she will lay ano- 

 ther ; and, if she be plundered of that, she will then produce a third ; and so 

 on. If you dissect a guillemot, you will find a knot of eggs within her. The 

 rock-climbers affirm that the bird can retain these eggs, or produce them, ac- 

 cording to circumstances. Thus, if she be allowed to hatch her first egg, she lays 

 no more for the season ; if that egg be lost or taken away, another is laid to sup- 

 ply its place." Waterfall's ''Essays on Natural History J 1st Series, 158. J2.N. 



