STACK AND SKERRY. 47 



" June 29th. Impossible to effect a landing, and useless to 

 attempt it. Mr. Norrie, however, made seven or eight first-rate 

 ' shots ' with his camera. 



"The height of the Stack is 130 feet. A smooth square preci- 

 pice of a greenish-grey rock, seamed near the top with a broad 

 horizontal dark red vein of felspar, faces the south, and the same, 

 continuing round a very sharply denned angle to the west, also 

 faces the Atlantic. 



" This latter surmounts a dangerously slippery, steeply sloping 

 under-cliif or pedestal. The entire summit, sloping and rounded 

 towards the east side to within 50 or 60 feet of the water, is 

 densely populated by Gannets; and on the north-west side they 

 are equally numerous upon certain broad shelves, where the rock 

 has broken away apparently, in large horizontal masses great 

 steps of a giant stair ! The isolated portions at the ends also are 

 covered with the birds to even lower elevations above the sea, but 

 on the west side, where it is more precipitous and a smoother 

 rock, there is very little bird life. The colour of the whole is very 

 fine ; the top, snowy- white with birds and whitewash ; lined across 

 here and there with small black streaks, where the perpendicular 

 facets of the stair, or step-like ledges, occur ; the lower portions all 

 around dark with the action of the waves and spray and adhering 

 tangles ; the south and west faces of mural precipice as already 

 mentioned of an almost glaucous green or grey, and almost 

 lustrous surface, with the intersecting bands of dark red felspar 

 just below the snowy summit ; contrasts of colour by no means 

 common among our islets of the sea. Moreover, the snowy masses 

 of the adult Gannet companies are ' picked out ' quite strikingly, 

 and accentuated by the dark jackets of the younger birds, and by 

 the crevices holding shelves of sober-coloured Guillemots and 

 Kazorbills. We had a particularly fine light upon the rock for 

 the camera, and got good chances of views on all sides, notwith- 

 standing the high and deep heave of the Atlantic swell. 



" We noticed that a very much larger percentage of immature 

 birds occupy the Stack than we have ever observed elsewhere at 

 any British haunt of the Gannet." 



