530 NATATORES. PUFFINUS. SHEARWATER. 



FROM the accounts transmitted to us by WILLOUGHBY and 

 PENNANT, this species appears, at the time they wrote, to 

 have resorted in great numbers to the Calf of Man, a small 

 islet at the south end of the main island, and only di- 

 vided from it by a narrow channel. But, from the informa- 

 tion I have been able to obtain, confirmed by the testimony 

 of Sir WILLIAM JARDINE, (who visited the Isle of Man a 

 few years ago with the express view of ascertaining this and 

 some other points connected with Ornithology), it seems now 

 to be entirely deserted by these birds, a circumstance in all 

 probability occasioned by the wanton and greedy destruction 

 of their eggs and young, for PENNANT tells us, that in his 

 day great numbers were annually killed by the person who 

 then farmed this islet, as the birds were in high estimation, 

 both in a fresh and salted state. This Shearwater was also 

 said to breed upon Scilly Islands, but not having extended 

 my inquiries to that group, I am unable to say whether it is 

 now to be found there. It is still, however, abundant in the 

 Orkneys, where it breed in holes scratched in the earth that 

 fill up the interstices of the rocks and bold headlands, and is 

 stated by Low to be the main object of pursuit to the rock- 

 men^ who endanger their lives in climbing the most awful 

 precipices for the eggs and young of the various waterfowl 

 Incuba- that make their nests in such situations. Like the rest of the 

 genus, this bird lays but one white egg, of a rounded form, 

 being equally obtuse at each end, and not inferior in size to 

 that of a domestic fowl. It arrives at its breeding station in 

 February or March; and soon after August, when its young 

 is able to fly, deserts it for the open sea, migrating, as the 

 winter approaches, in a southerly direction towards the coast 

 of Spain, the Mediterranean, &c. In Britain it is almost 

 entirely confined to the western coast, being of very rare 

 occurrence on the eastern, where I have only met with one 

 individual, which was shot upon an excursion to the Fern 

 Islands. WILLOUGHBY (in his Ornithology, so admirably 

 correct for the time at which he wrote), has described this 



