CHAPTER VII. 



FRAGMENTS FROM THE SEASHORE, 



N 



A WELSH ROCK STACK. 



O feathered friends strike 

 the imagination of the 

 beholder with so much force 

 as sea-fowl. Whether they 

 be seen wheeling in noisy 

 clamour round the summit of 

 some rocky headland upon 

 which they breed, or reposing 

 on the sunlit waves of the 

 ever-restless ocean, they are 

 things of grace and beauty, 

 and impress the mind with 

 a vividness that neither time nor circumstance 

 can stale. 



Near the end of June, 1900, I travelled North 

 with the intention of revisiting the Bass Rock 

 in quest of photographs of gannets and their 

 young at home. When I neared North Berwick, 

 however, I met two ornithological friends who 

 had already been there, and they informed me 

 that my project was useless, as a number of 

 masons and labourers engaged in the construction 



