270 EXTRACTS FROM NOTE-BOOKS. CH. XXXVI. 



The eider-duck, peculiarly wild and shy as it is, is 

 equally tame while sitting, allowing herself to be 

 handled, and her nest to be robbed, not of its eggs, 

 but of the valuable down of which it is composed, 

 without attempting to move from it. 



It is a singularly interesting sight to witness a 

 number of the solan geese fishing on a calm day in 

 the Firth of Forth. Following the shoals of her- 

 ring, these handsome birds dash one after the other 

 into the water with a force which is actually as- 

 tonishing, coming up (and almost invariably with a 

 herring in their bill) several yards from the place 

 where they made the plunge. They do not rise to 

 the surface gradually, like most divers, but sud- 

 denly, like a cork, or as if their buoyancy equalled 

 that of a blad der. The peculiar manner in which the 

 skin of this bird is attached to the body, leaving large 

 intervals where the flesh and skin seem scarcely at 

 all connected, may give it this peculiar lightness, 

 which to the spectator is extremely striking. 



During the severe winter season the solan geese 

 disappear from the Bass Piock, going no one knows 

 where ; but even at that season two or three fine 

 warm days bring them all back again. Their 

 abiding places are probably regulated more by the 

 supply of food than by the weather. 



I am by no means of opinion that either herring, 



