374 NATATORES. 



hearty scolding ; but the cradle-castle of the skuas is not to 

 be stormed with impunity. All who have visited it, confess 

 there is danger, and some of the accounts add that there has 

 been death those who have had the hardihood to attempt 

 the plundering of the skuas' nests, with the head unprotected, 

 have had their skulls broken by the reiterated dashes of the 

 parental beaks. Even the eagles keep aloof from the habi- 

 tations of the skuas ; and they, singly, so alarm the gulls, that 

 they disgorge their load of fish, which the skua seizes during 

 its fall. They are also great robbers of the nests of other birds. 

 They have, indeed, many of the characters, and some of 

 the action, of eagles. The bill has a cere to the upper man- 

 dible. It is of moderate length, hard, strong, cylindrical, 

 compressed, very sharp in the cutting edges, and hooked at 

 the tip of the upper mandible, and having the under one for- 

 tified by a salient angle at the middle. The legs are stout, 

 with part of the tibia naked, and the hind toe nearly rudi- 

 mental ; but the claws are strong and much hooked. The 

 head, neck, and body are strongly and firmly made ; there 

 is the same power of spreading the tail as in the eagles ; and 

 the flight is by jerks or rather dashes. They are chiefly 

 found in the north, collecting at the breeding grounds 

 seldom more to the south than Orkney and Shetland; in 

 the summer, ranging as far as Spitzbergen, and making prize 

 of fishes, eggs, young birds, shelled mollusca and Crustacea on 

 the shores, and the "kreng" or carcase of whales and other 

 large animals in the sea. It seems to be chiefly for " holding 

 on " while they tear the floating carcases piecemeal with the 

 bill, that they have the formidable hooked claws. The 

 North Sea often supplies a rich harvest of dead carcases, as 

 seals and other animals are subject to epizoott/, and float dead 

 in thousands ; and in these cases, the skuas lend a hand in 

 playing the vulture. Most of the species breed both in the 

 Orkneys and in Shetland, but only on peculiar spots. The 



