391 THE GANNET. 



fatal to the starving Cormorants, we might have added, that 

 in the way of the Gannet they throw no impediment ; 

 buoyant as a bladder, no sea can overwhelm him ; there he 

 floats, if so it pleases him, lighter than a cork, on the sum- 

 mit of the most angry waves, without let or hindrance. On 

 their airy, spreading pinions too, they can, in case of disap- 

 pointment in one place, transport themselves, in an incredibly 

 short time, to another. The inhabitants of St. Kilda assert, 

 that they occasionally go a hundred miles or more for the 

 purpose of fishing ; a fact, they say, proved by finding in 

 their nests, hooks of English manufacture, sticking in fish 

 bones.^ 



Their nests are usually placed on the ledges of apparently 

 inaccessible rocks, in which two eggs only are, for the most 

 part, laid ; but, breeding as they do, on so many of the 

 desolate rocks of the northern shores, the number produced is 

 incredible, and in many parts becomes a source of considerable 

 profit to those who catch them. Thus, Mr. Landt, in his 

 account of some islands near the Feroes, says, "The old ones 

 are caught in the middle of April, when they have built their 

 nests, but before they have laid their eggs. The peasants 

 steal upon them in the night-time, or when it is dark, in the 

 places where they sit and sleep, and seize them by griping 

 them in a peculiar manner, which prevents them from 

 emitting any cry ; for if they are suffered to make a noise, all 

 the rest would awaken and take themselves to flight. In 

 the course of a season, those who are successful will catch, of 

 old and young ones, about four hundred brace." 



As we shall have occasion to speak of the Gannet again, 

 in giving a general account of the modes of catching the 

 various sea-birds that are found upon our shores, we shall, 

 for the present, take our leave of it, as well as of the two last 

 divisions of this Table, the Phaetons (see page 79), or Tropic- 

 Birds, and Anhingas, or Darters, both comparatively little 

 known, and inhabitants of remote regions, the former, from 

 its name, being found almost invariably within the tropics, 



* MARTIN'S Kilda. 



