Puffin Island 



barbarity, went about testing the state of the eggs 

 by working a knife-blade through the shells : if 

 the egg contained a chick in an advanced state of 

 development, the blood which appeared showed that 

 it was useless for "bio wing " purposes, and it was 

 returned to the nest. Upon my expostulating at 

 this barbarity, he expressed regret that he " had no 

 stamp paper " ! If the egg gave signs of having 

 been freshly laid, it was stored with a growing collec- 

 tion in a wicker basket he carried. This party was 

 captained by three or four ministers of religion, one 

 of whom stood by smiling indulgently upon the 

 juvenile ardour of this budding naturalist of some 

 forty summers ! 



This horde of vandals swept the island, and we 

 could mark their progress by the empty and dis- 

 ordered nests, but principally by the clamour of the 

 birds the shrill "He-hoh!" and the stern Ha- 

 ha-ha-ha ! " as they hovered helplessly, or dashed to 

 and fro wild with rage at this wholesale spoliation. 



Did our friends of the Field Naturalists' Club 

 not note the composition of the nests they pillaged ? 

 the hundreds and hundreds of fern-roots which 

 went to the making of a single nest ? Every root 

 represented a journey to and from the mainland ; 

 for there are no ferns in the island. Backwards and 

 forwards the birds must have gone, full of a new 

 ardour in those spring days, following, as they did, a 

 winter which levied a fearful toll of life upon sea- 

 birds generally in these parts ; backwards and 



245 



