34 The Birds of the 



others with names as uncouth, corruptions most of 

 them of Anglo-Saxon* descriptive titles. 



Terns and gulls had been from the time we started 

 hovering round us singly or in twos and threes, and an 

 occasional guillemot or puffin had dived out of the 

 way of the boat or risen with trailing splash and the 

 sharp quick beat which is characteristic of the flight 

 of short-winged birds ; but it was not until we had 

 been afloat for an hour or so, and were nearing the 

 Brownsman, our first landing-place, with the Crum- 

 stone and Fang on our right, that we had any taste of 

 what was to come. 



The whitewashed tops of the black basaltic rocks 

 which faced us shone in the sunshine, and through a 

 glass we could see they were lined, without a gap, 

 with motionless figures, looking in the distance like 

 an army of dwarfs, in black, with white facings, 

 drawn up in review order to receive us. As we 

 pulled into a little bay, hidden from us until we 

 rounded a corner by the Gun Rock, we found our- 

 selves the centre of a startled screaming multitude of 

 puffins, gulls, and terns, and a few minutes later ran 

 the boat aground, and landed on the slippery rocks. 



In early times the knowledge that the birds which 

 took sanctuary on the Islands were under the 

 miraculous protection of St. Cuthbert was security 

 enough for them and their eggs. " Beatus etenim 

 Cuthbertus," wrote Reginald of Coldingham in the 

 reign of King Stephen, " talem eis pads quietudinem 



* A table, giving in parallel columns the names in the forms 

 in which they appear in records stretching back seven or eight 

 hundred years at least, will be found, with much interesting 

 information on other matters, in a monograph on the Fame 

 Islands, by Mr. George Tate, published in 1857 by the Ber- 

 wickshire Naturalists' Society. 



