Birds by Land and Sea 



as they shot from beneath you on that thin, dry- 

 looking green slime. Now you will have to abandon 

 the camera to save yourself; then you will have to 

 sacrifice yourself to save the camera. In the end 

 you will stand, a mass of bruises and general scarifica- 

 tion, on a weed-covered slab, with the sea which 

 seems never to go properly out " sucking," as with 

 great wet lips, in the hollows between the blocks, 

 and, after periods of apparerft subsidence, rising with 

 alarming irregularity to flush parts which it appeared 

 to have abandoned. 



In front of you is the Guillemots' Hole. There 

 was more hole than guillemots when I was there, 

 although the birds were evidently in a fair way to 

 increase their numbers. The latter, however, are in 

 no way to be compared with the demoralizing multi- 

 tudes to be met with at any of the noted breeding- 

 stations ; and the question was not seldom asked : 

 Is it worth the trouble ? Is anything worth anything, 

 unless measured by its own standard ? one might 

 answer. For my part, I prefer the zest of the hunt 

 on new ground, even if attended by a slender find, 

 to stumbling through overcrowded colonies where 

 one is afraid to step for fear of treading on a nest. 



But if one goes for something besides numbers, 

 there is to my thinking nothing more alluring than 

 some out-of-the-way haunt of sea-birds such as this. 

 The great white cliffs bar you off behind ; the sea 

 hems you in before. You have got over the wall 

 of your own world, but are unable to enter this 



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