384. HISTORY OF 



sight, appear a benefit to mankind ; but when we 

 consider how many of the natives of our islands 

 are sustained by their flesh, either fresh or salted, 

 we shall find no satisfaction in thinking that these 

 poor people may in time lose their chief support. 

 The gull in general, as was said, builds on the 

 ledges of rocks, and lays from one egg to three, 

 in a nest formed of long grass and sea-weed. 

 Most of the kind are fishy tasted, with black 

 stringy flesh ; yet the young ones are better food ; 

 and of these, with several other birds of the pen- 

 guin kind, the poor inhabitants of our northern 

 islands make their wretched banquets. They 

 have been long used to no other food j and even 

 salted gull can be relished by those w r ho know 

 no better. Almost all delicacy is a relative thing ; 

 and the man who repines at the luxuries of a well- 

 served table, starves not for want, but from com- 

 parison. The luxuries of the poor are indeed 

 coarse to us, yet still they are luxuries to those 

 ignorant of better ; and it is probable enough that 

 a Kilda or a Feroe man may be found to exist, 

 outdoing Apicius himself in consulting the plea- 

 sures of the table. Indeed, if it be true that such 

 meat as is the most dangerously earned is the 

 sweetest, no man can dine so luxuriously as these, 

 as none venture so hardily in the pursuit of a din- 

 ner. In Jacobson's History of the Feroe Islands, 

 we have an account of the method in which those 

 birds are taken ; and I will deliver it in his own 

 simple manner. 



" It cannot be expressed with what pains and 

 danger they take these birds in those high steep 



