PHOTOGRAPHING A WREN'S NEST. 75 



imagined, a situation over the door-lintel of one of 

 these dark structures did not lend itself readily to 

 picture-making. To get over the difficulty caused by 

 an almost entire absence of light, my brother fixed 

 a looking-glass at such an angle inside the cleit 

 that it reflected the rays of light coming through 

 the little doorway backwards and upwards on to 

 the nest. I then went outside, and with another 

 mirror threw the sun's rays upon the looking-glass 

 inside. By this means my brother was able to 

 focus the nest and some of its surroundings. No 

 sooner, however, had this difficulty been got over 

 than another presented itself. The dark slide con- 

 taining the sensitised plate could not be got in and 

 arranged for exposure on account of the position 

 of the nest and the narrowness of the cleit. This 

 was extremely awkward, but we surmounted it by 

 carefully noting the position of each of the legs 

 of the tripod and then marking the exact position 

 of the camera with a lead pencil on the stones of 

 the side wall against which it was actually leaning. 

 It was then removed, the slide introduced, and 

 shutter drawn out ready to expose the slide, and 

 the whole put back into the register formed by the 

 pencil marks. A long exposure and several inter- 

 mittent gleams of sunshine produced the picture 

 here given. 



We arranged an excursion to Borrera, and as 

 soon as a favourable day occurred, started, after 

 listening without understanding a single word of a 

 prolonged debate amongst the men and the tire- 

 some wrangling of their dogs. As we neared the 

 island the scene became simply magnificent. The 

 air above and around us was thickly peopled with 

 thousands upon thousands of Gannets of different 

 ages, as could easily be seen from the wonderful 



