444 BIRDS OF THE WEST OF SCOTLAND. 



information given, however, is merely a repetition of what that 

 writer and Martin had previously recorded. In a still later 

 publication, viz., Lightfoot's Flora Scotica (1777), to which is 

 prefixed a sketch of Caledonian Zoology by Pennant, the follow- 

 ing brief account is given: " Great Auk Sometimes visits St. 

 Kilda, and breeds there; not a regular migrant; called there Gair- 

 fowl, from Geyr-fugl, the name it is known by in Iceland, where 

 they are common; from whence or from Norway they may 

 probably wander." 



In 1793 another of the Church of Scotland missionaries, the 

 Rev. John Lane Buchanan, published a book of ' Travels in the 

 Western Hebrides, from 1782 to 1790,' in which (pp. 118-146) he 

 professes to give a full account of St. Kilda and its birds. " The 

 Garefowl," he writes, " is four feet long, and supposed to be the 

 pigeon (?) of South America. Its egg is said to exceed that of a 

 goose as much as the latter exceeds that of a hen, which it lays 

 close by the seaside, being incapable from its bulk of soaring up 

 to the clifts. It appears in July, and even then but rarely, for it 

 does not visit St. Kilda yearly." It is extremely doubtful, I think, 

 whether this writer was ever on St. Kilda, and his brief account 

 of the Great Auk is evidently borrowed from Macaulay. A better 

 notice of it appears in the appendix to a 'General View of the 

 Agriculture of the Hebrides, by James MacDonald, A.M.,' pub- 

 lished in 1811 "a work," as he himself tells us, "drawn up by a 

 native, and the result of seven voyages and journeys at different 

 periods since 1793 among these isles, and particularly of a journey 

 of more than 2900 miles through them in the months of May, 

 June, July, August, and September, 1808." In his account of St. 

 Kilda he gives a list of the birds, the commencement of which is 

 as follows: "I. Bunnabhuachaille, or Great Auk, is the largest 

 bird met with in the neighbourhood of St. Kilda. It is larger 

 than the common goose, of a black colour, the irides red, having 

 a long white spot under each eye ; the bill is long and broad at 

 the base. It cannot fly, by reason of the shortness of its wings ; 

 lays only one egg, and, if robbed of it, lays no more that season. 

 It arrives in St. Kilda early in May, and departs towards the 

 latter end of June." It is worth noticing here that Mr Mac- 

 Donald, if he did not see the Great Auk alive, must have 

 supposed that Martin, in speaking of the bird being " red about 

 the eyes," referred to the irides. 



