224 THE GANNET. 



naturalists who wish to acquire more information 

 on the internal economy of air-inflated birds. 



In our account of the dismal tempests that so 

 often prove fatal to the starving Cormorants, we 

 might have added, that in the way of the Gannet 

 they throw no impediment; buoyant as a bladder, 

 no sea can overwhelm him; there he floats, if so it 

 pleases him, lighter than a cork, on the summit of 

 the most angry waves, without let or hinderance. 

 On their airy, spreading pinions too, they can, in case 

 of disappointment in one place, transport themselves 

 in an incredibly short time, to another. The inhabit- 

 ants of St. Kilda assert, that they occasionally go a 

 hundred miles or more for the purpose of fishing; a 

 fact, they say, proved by finding in their nests, hooks 

 of English manufacture, sticking in fish bones *. 



Their nests are usually placed on the ledges of 

 apparently inaccessible rocks, in which two eggs 

 only are, for the most part, laid; but, breeding as 

 they do, on so many of the desolate rocks of the 

 northern shores, the number produced is incredible, 

 and in many parts becomes a source of considerable 

 profit to those who catch them. Thus, Mr. Landt, 

 in his account of some islands near the Ferroes, says, 

 " The old ones are caught in the middle of April, 

 when they have built their nests, but before they 

 have laid their eggs. The peasants steal upon them 

 in the night-time, or when it is dark, in the places 

 where they sit and sleep, and seize them by griping 

 them in a peculiar manner, which prevents them 

 from emitting any cry ; for if they are suffered to 

 make a noise, all the rest would awaken and take 



* Martin's Kilda. 



