192 OBSERVATIONS ON BIRDS. 



and is now in the Museum of the Cambridge Philo- 

 sophical Society. Thus it appears that birds, or- 

 dinarily of the most decided oceanic habits, are occa- 

 sionally met with inland. The occurrence of this 

 species so far from the coast is the more remark- 

 able, from its belonging to a genus in which the 

 wings are short, and ill-adapted for any extensive 

 flight.* 



GANNET, OR SOLAND GOOSE.f 



IN this species, we have another instance of an 

 oceanic bird being sometimes met with very far from 

 its usual haunts, less extraordinary perhaps than that 

 above mentioned, from the great powers of flight 

 which the gannet possesses, and which would enable 

 it to traverse vast tracts of sea or land in a very short 

 time. Two of these birds, both adults, were killed 

 in Cambridgeshire in the autumn of 1824 ; one near 

 Fulbourn on the llth of October, the other in the 

 fens between Ely and Southery, about a week after- 

 wards. Montagu and other authors observe that, in 

 the autumn, the gannets leave their breeding stations 

 on the northern coasts of the kingdom, journeying 

 southward, and that they may be occasionally seen 

 throughout the winter in every part of the British 

 Channel, but generally keep far out at sea. The above 

 is the only instance I ever heard or met with of their 



* White mentions an analogous instance of the little auk being 

 found alive near Alresford, in Hampshire. Nat. Hist, of Sel- 

 borne, Lett. XXXIX. to Pennant. 



f Sula bassanu, Selb. 



