442 BIRDS OF THE WEST OF SCOTLAND. 



Caithness, in 1864, has been carefully treasured, in the full 

 conviction that too much importance cannot be attached to a 

 subject in which naturalists of every country are now so deeply 

 interested. 



The first intelligible account of this extraordinary bird as a 

 British species is unquestionably that given by M. Martin, in 

 a curious little work, entitled 'A voyage to St. Kilda, the 

 remotest of all the Hebrides,' which was published in 1698. 

 This author who, as he tells us in his preface, " was prompted by 

 a generous Curiosity to undertake a Voyage through several Isles 

 to St. Kilda, and that in an open Boat, to the almost manifest 

 hazard of his life," thus speaks of the bird : " The Sea Fowls are 

 first Gairfowl, being the stateliest, as well as the Largest, of all the 

 Fowls here, and above the Size of a Solan Goose, of a Black Colour, 

 Red about the Eyes, a large White Spot under each Eye, a long 

 broad Bill; stands stately, his whole Body erected, his Wings short; 

 he Flyeth not at all, lays his egg upon the bare Rock, which if taken 

 away, he lays no more for that Year; he is Palmipes, or Whole- 

 Footed, and has the Hatching-Spot upon his Breast, i.e., a bare Spot 

 from which the Feathers have fallen off with the heat in Hatching ; 

 his Egg is twice as big as that of a Solan Goose, and is variously 

 spotted Black, Green, and Dark; he comes without regard to any 

 Wind, appears the first of May, and goes away about the middle of 

 June." It is, I think, doubtful whether Martin ever saw the bird, 

 as in another and larger work, entitled ' A description of the 

 Western Islands of Scotland/ published five years afterwards, and 

 in which he gives a full account of St. Kilda and its birds, he does 

 not even mention it an omission he would scarcely have made 

 had he been favoured, and consequently impressed, with a sight 

 of its " Whole body erected." His account, however, considering 

 the time when he wrote, is sufficiently accurate to show that the 

 description, if from hearsay, must have been supplied by persons 

 who were accustomed to see the bird regularly. Sixty years' later, 

 viz., in 1758, the Rev. Kenneth Macaulay landed on St. Kilda on the 

 6th of June, and remained a month there; after which he wrote 

 a history of the island, which appeared in 1764. In this work 

 he says, " I had not an opportunity of knowing a very curious 

 fowl, sometimes seen upon this coast, and an absolute stranger, I 

 am apt to believe, in every other part of Scotland. The men of 

 Hirta call it the Garefowl, corruptly, perhaps, instead of Rarefowl, 



