St. Kilda from Without. 99 



What is given to the wing is taken from legs. A 

 Fulmar in confinement, even if it can be induced to 

 feed, commonly dies almost at once of cramp in the 

 thighs. 



When poor Lady Grange called St. Kilda a 

 "stinking" isle, she used the word probably in a 

 more literal sense than that attached to it in the 

 ordinary schoolboy's vocabulary. The Fulmar is a 

 living keg of strong, musty, scented oil, the smell of 

 which is said to pervade the whole island and every- 

 thing in and about it. The eggs, which in shape and 

 colour are not unlike large, finely-grained, and very 

 white and thin-shelled hen's eggs, retain the smell for 

 years, strongly enough, when a drawer is opened 

 containing one of them, to scent the entire room. 



Three years running, with the special object of 

 seeing the gathering of the Fulmars, we had 

 perseveringly planned expeditions to St. Kilda. In 

 1889, enquiries, which failed in the end, as the 

 locality is not popular with shipowners, were made 

 for a steamer to take a party of congenial spirits for 

 a few weeks' exploration. The next year a humbler 

 programme berths had been engaged in the earliest 

 tourist boat. But, as for two days before the time 

 fixed for sailing a gale had been blowing, it seemed 

 useless to rush off to Oban with the almost certainty 

 of getting no farther. The third attempt was to be 

 the lucky one, and everything looked well. The 

 census was to be taken at the end of June, the 

 height of the breeding season, and one of Her Majesty's 

 ships, with a spare cabin, was told off for the trip. 



On a lovely still evening an eighth or tenth 

 consecutive day of dead calm, after a night and day 

 journey without a break we left the train at Strome 

 Ferry. 



