196 GAME BIRDS AND WILD FOWL. 



not suffer them to be unfairly molested. A por- 

 tion of the eggs is always taken ; and their num- 

 bers may be judged of from the fact that an 

 average season produces more than 30,000 eggs, 

 Five years back the keeper said they took 44,000. 

 Parts of their abode are so swampy that no one 

 can walk there to gather eggs, which of course 

 tends to the maintenance of their numbers. Now 

 and then a year of jubilee is given, and no eggs 

 taken ; this was done lately at the instance of the 

 neighbouring farmers, who justly value the ser- 

 vices of these birds in the destruction of grubs." 



The gannet (sula bassana) breeds in consider- 

 able numbers on Ailsa Craig, and on certain parts 

 of the west and south-west coast of Ireland. On 

 the Bass rock, at the entrance to the Frith of 

 Forth, their nests are mercilessly plundered every 

 year of the young, in a partially fledged state, 

 from the sale of whose down and feathers, as well 

 as of their bodies, the person who rents this iso- 

 lated cliff reaps a tolerable revenue : he has thus 

 the power and exercises it of preventing 

 parties of Leith gunners from anchoring under 

 the precipice and expending their ammunition on 

 the old ones ; but when we recollect that the 

 gannet hatches but one egg, that each pair of 

 adults has therefore but a single young one, 

 and that great numbers of immature birds are 



