340 OUR RARER BIRDS 



tenant of the rock takes vast quantities of eggs and young 

 birds every year the latter chiefly for the sake of their 

 feathers and fat; although at one time a roasted young 

 " Solan Goose " was regarded as a delicacy by the country- 

 people round about. For this privilege he pays the sum of 

 thirty pounds yearly to Sir Hugh Dalrymple, in whose family 

 the Bass has been for nearly two hundred years. The Guille- 

 mots, Puffins, and Gulls also increase the profits of the rock, 

 as also do the rabbits, with which the place abounds. This 

 great bird nursery becomes even more interesting when the 

 young are half grown, and no pen can do justice to the 

 stirring scenes of bustle arid excitement. 



Another great breeding -place of the Gannet is on the 

 island of Borreay and its adjacent stacks, about four miles 

 from St. Kilda. The flat sloping top of one of these stupend- 

 ous ocean rocks, called by the natives Stack-a-Lii, looks white 

 as the driven snow, so thickly do the Gannets cluster there, 

 and the sides are just as densely populated wherever the cliff 

 is rugged and broken. So vast is this colony of birds that it 

 may be distinctly seen forty miles away, looking like some 

 huge vessel under full sail bending to windward. The 

 climbing of this stack of rocks is considered one of the 

 greatest feats a St. Kildan can perform in the art of cliff- 

 climbing. Every autumn, when the young Gannets are 

 nearly ready for flight, a party of men scale the beetling 

 precipice and kill as many birds as they can, throwing their 

 bodies into the sea, where they are picked up by boats rowing 

 up and down for the purpose of collecting the spoil. The 

 Gannet is highly prized by these primitive people, for the 

 sake of its feathers, its oil, and its flesh. I should not like to 

 hazard a conjecture as to the enormous numbers of these birds 

 which are killed here every year. When in St. Kilda I often 

 used to watch the Gannet fishing. The manner in which this 

 bird takes its prey is very interesting. The Cormorant 



