112 



WITH NATURE AND A CAMERA. 



one by a leg and 



PUFFIN GIN. 



its neck, and another by one 

 leg only. 



Each piece of rope 

 carries about forty snares 

 upon it, and seven or 

 eight Puffins are sometimes 

 caught at a single haul. In 

 Martin's time the natives 

 caught forty or fifty birds 

 a day with a snare, but one 

 woman has been known re- 

 cently to kill as many as 

 two hundred and eighty, 

 and another one hundred 

 and twenty-seven in three 

 hours. 



In former days these 

 snares must have been made 

 very much stronger than 

 they are now and fastened 

 down with extraordinary 

 security, if we are to be- 

 lieve a story recorded by 

 our old friend Martin, on 

 the authority of the folks 

 who lived at the time he 

 visited St. Kilda. A fowler 

 whilst setting one of these 

 snares accidentally got one 

 of his toes entangled in a 

 noose, and being thereby 

 tripped to a fall went over 

 the edge of a precipice, and 

 spent the following night 

 hanging upside down with 

 nothing but one hundred 



