THE RAZOR-BILL. 299 



not on the flat summits of the rocky islets. The eggs are 

 very large, being about three inches in length ; and the inha- 

 bitants of the cliffy places, where they are to be found, seek 

 for them in a very daring and even perilous manner. Taken 

 simply, they are not very palatable ; but the Orcadians, and 

 other inhabitants of the islands, dress them with salt, pepper, 

 and vinegar, and esteem them both a wholesome and a nutri- 

 tious mess. The birds themselves, even when young, are 

 rank and fishy, and can hardly be rendered tolerable by the 

 usual method of curing the rankness of sea-birds, which is 

 burying them some time in vegetable mould. The number 

 of sea-birds is so great in those northern places, and they are 

 so staple an article in the subsistence of the people, that a 

 little science would be well expended in investigating the 

 best means by which their rankness might be corrected. 

 Were that successfully done, (and there is little doubt that it 

 might be done,) a great addition would be made, not only to 

 the comfort of those remote people, but to the commercial 

 importance of their wild localities, and to the general wealth 

 of the country. A hundred thousand tons of sea-birds might 

 be easily captured for exportation every year, if they could 

 be so treated as to be made palatable ; and that at ten pounds 

 a ton, or little more than a penny a pound, would produce an 

 annual revenue of a million sterling : which is at least as 

 well worth trying for as many of the other projects upon 

 which our Solons now and then unprontably squander their 

 own wits and the funds of others. 



Soon after the breeding season, the old birds retire wholly 

 from our southern shores, and generally from some of the 

 northern ones ; or, at all events, they spread themselves, and 

 are not found anywhere in such numbers as when they are 

 breeding. The young remain a little longer, and sometimes 

 winter in places where the old birds are seldom seen, at least 

 during one part of the season ; and that has occasioned some 





