PUFFIN ISLAND n 



however, had different tastes, and had selected bleached 

 rabbit-bones for an adornment. 



The largest members of the fauna are a small party of 

 very wild goats, the male being a magnificent animal 

 with huge horns; how long they have been there I do not 

 know, but they are never milked, for on the steep cliffs it 

 would be difficult to catch them. Giraldus Cambrensis, 

 writing more than 700 years ago, tells of another mammal. 

 " There is a small island, almost adjoining Anglesey, 

 which is inhabited by hermits, living by manual labour 

 and serving God. It is remarkable that when, by the 

 influence of human passions, any discord arises among 

 them, all their provisions are devoured and infested by a 

 species of small mice, with which the island abounds; 

 and when the discord ceases, they are no longer molested." 

 Perhaps biologists never quarrel ! Perhaps the absence 

 of human inhabitants accounts for the extinction of these 

 murine checks to immorality; at any rate, we are still 

 looking for the " species of small mice." 



