Outer Fames. 45 



no chance of escape, and the distinctly sulphureous 

 smell of its haunts is in keeping with the look of the 

 bird. 



The cormorant has for some wise reason (perhaps 

 to help its rapid digestion, or perhaps to neutralise to 

 some extent the smell of stinking fish if the latter is 

 the intention the work is very poorly done) been 

 gifted with an extraordinary power of secreting lime. 

 The entire surface of the Megstones for some 

 distance round the nests of which we counted 

 ninety-three, almost all with eggs in looked as if it 

 had been freshly whitewashed. The eggs are long 

 and narrow, without much difference between the two 

 ends, and if held up to the light and looked at from 

 the inside through a hole are beautiful, many of them 

 being as green as an emerald or as the eye of the 

 bird itself. But seen from the outside they look like 

 eggs which a boy has begun to cut out of a 

 lump of chalk, and left only half finished, irregular 

 blotches of rough lime sticking out on many of 

 them. 



The nests are round, and built of dry seaweed. 

 They are about two feet across, or a few inches more, 

 and many of them not much less in height, and built 

 with great regularity, looking almost as if they were 

 lengths cut from a black marble column, slightly 

 cupped at the tops, and, curiously enough, stood 

 out most of them from the whitewashed platforms 

 unspotted. 



The only other sign of life which we saw on the 

 Megstones did not detract from its lonely wildness. 

 It was a long-legged, thin, wild-looking blackbeetle, 

 which had been sunning itself on the hot rock nearest 

 the highest point. It rushed towards us, as if to 

 attack, at a great pace, and before we could catch or 



