98 St. Kildafrom Without. 



But many as are the other interests touched, it is 

 for ornithologists that St. Kilda reserves its chief 

 fascination. In no other spot in British waters, not 

 even excepting the marvellous " Noup-of-Noss " in 

 Shetland, do sea-birds of many kind congregate in 

 anything like the same numbers. It is the last 

 recorded haunt of the Great Auk, and the breeding 

 place of ninety-nine, at least, of every hundred 

 Fulmars that nest within the haunts of the British 

 Isles. 



The Fulmar, which is the chief source of the 

 islanders' wealth, supplying to quote an old writer 

 " oil for the lamp, down for the bed, the most 

 salubrious food, and the most efficacious ointment, 

 and possessing a thousand other virtues/' is a 

 typical representative of its class, the Tubinarides, 

 which, varying in size from " Mother Carey's 

 chickens," with bodies less than a Sparrow's, to 

 the great wandering Albatross, with a stretch of 

 wings of 1 6 or 17 feet, are all formed on the 

 same general lines, fitting them for a life spent 

 almost entirely on the wing. The most marked 

 characteristics of the family, next to the great 

 development of wing muscles, are the nostrils, which, 

 instead of being, as in most other birds, mere slits in 

 the beak, take the form of prominent open tubes, 

 through which the air a free current of which is, it 

 is easy to understand, essential for long untiring 

 flight passes to the inner air-vessels unchecked. 

 In some of the tribes the tube-openings are at the 

 side of the beak, ending, as in the case of the great 

 white Albatross, with the upward curl of a cavalry 

 officer's moustache. In others, the tubes run straight 

 out like pistol barrels, single or double, resting and 

 ending abruptly on the upper part of the beak. 



