HAUNTS OF THE SHEARWATER 227 



attempts to acclimatise Partridges in the Scilly Islands 

 have all hitherto failed. The ground at least in the 

 two or three larger cultivated islands seems suitable, 

 and Pheasants do well. For nine or ten months in the 

 year the birds, it is said, seem contented and at home. 

 But almost always as the pairing season comes round, 

 they become restless and unsettled. 



The homing instinct, which leads the Limpet, that 

 has been moved an inch or two, back somehow to his 

 own exact place on the rock, and the armies of the 

 Penguins, waddling in Indian file, with bleeding feet 

 over untold miles of rock and ice, on the appointed day 

 to their precious little pebble-heaps on Cape Adare, 

 and gathers Fulmars from north, south, east, and west 

 to St. Kilda, and wandering Shearwaters to ancestral 

 breeding-grounds in the cliffs of the Great Skelligs or 

 thrift-peat of Annet, draws the Partridges irresistibly 

 eastwards, and sooner or later they disappear in the 

 direction of the mainland. 



