PELECANID^E. 263 



are, Ailsa Craig, an isolated mass to the west of Scotland, 

 fifteen miles off the coast of Ayr, about two miles in cir- 

 cumference, and rising to a height of one thousand feet ; 

 Souliskerry, near the Orkneys ; the Bass Rock, in the Firth 

 of Forth, to which we shall presently more particularly refer ; 

 St. Kilda, where, with other sea-fowl, they form the chief 

 sustenance of the poor, who capture them by means of a 

 noose of hair fastened to the end of a long stick, which 

 they slip over the heads of the birds while seated on their 

 eggs. It is said that many thousands of birds, besides an 

 immense quantity of eggs, are annually consumed in St. 

 Kilda alone.- The young are cured and dried by the inhabi- 

 tants for winter consumption. Mr. Hewitson, who visited 

 the island, says : " Everything around us proclaimed the 

 destruction of our favourites; mud-houses, the public store- 

 rooms of the village, were filled with dried birds for winter 

 store ; large packages of feathers (the coin with which they 

 pay their rent) were in every house; and loose feathers, 

 birds'* wings, and bones were everywhere strewed thick 

 and deep; the lamps, too, which they were burning, were 

 fed with oil from the Fulmar Petrel." Continuing our list, 

 other stations are the Skelig Isles on the Irish coast, and 

 Lundy Island, on the coast of Devonshire. Out of Britain, 



