THE GANtfET, OB SOLAN GOOSE. 369 



clous in their choice of particular spots ; but it will in general 

 be found that they give the preference to places which have 

 the best command of fishing grounds, and the more they 

 are surrounded by these the better. Their fishing grounds 

 in the breeding time are not the beaches and shallows 

 upon which fishes deposit their spawn, and where the fry 

 appear when very small ; but they are not at very great 

 distances from these ; and are, as one would say, near certain 

 runs of the water, where the young fishes may be supposed 

 to congregate intermediate between the nursery banks and 

 the deeps. The Fern Islands, the Bass, Ailsa, Sulas'-skerry, 

 and many of the jutting headlands in the Hebrides, may be 

 instanced, all of which are in runs of the tide or current, and 

 none of them very far from banks or shores on which spawn 

 is deposited. We want, however, a correlative history of 

 congregating birds and shoaling fishes upon the different 

 parts of our shores ; and as the work would be one of great 

 economic value, surely some of those gentlemen who have 

 talents, leisure, and all other requisites, for the task, might 

 instruct and delight us by performing it in a style worthy of 

 themselves. 



The gannet forms a sort of nest, though a rude one, of a 

 few pieces of withered bent, floating reeds, dry sea-weed, or 

 what it can get. The female has two eggs, or only one, 

 elongated in the form, rough and glossless in the shell, 

 whitish in the colour ; and, different from the diving birds, 

 very small in proportion to her size ; being very little longer 

 than that of the common duck, though the mother bird is at 

 least three times as heavy. Both gannets are engaged in the 

 incubation, each sitting alternately as the other fishes for 

 food. A colony of them is a busy, gay, and interesting, 

 though rather a noisy, scene \ but the rocks where sea birds 

 crowd are but slippery footing, and not very suitable for 

 holiday attire. 



VOL. II. 2 B 



