146 DELIBERATE DESTRUCTION OF ANIMAL LIFE 



though not published till 1773, mentions the Garefowl as 

 still a visitor to the island ; but while he describes the more 

 abundant and useful sea-birds in detail, he passes lightly 

 over the Garefowl, whose importance to the islanders had 

 apparently greatly diminished with its shrinking numbers. 

 Before the next recorded visit to St Kilda was paid, the 

 Garefowl, from being a regular visitor had become a mere 

 straggler to the island, appearing now no longer in May to 

 breed, but as a wanderer in July. In 1758 the Rev. Mr 

 Kenneth Macaulay visited the island and in his description, 

 published in 1764, makes mention of 



a very curious fowl sometimes seen upon this coast The men of Hirta 

 call it the Gare-fowl, corruptly, perhaps, instead of Rare-fowl.... It makes 

 its appearance in July. The St Kildeans do not receive an annual visit from 



this strange bird It keeps at a distance from them, they know not where, 



for a course of years. 



Here the records of any regular sort of visitation of 

 St Kilda by the Garefowl cease, and a few more exceedingly 

 casual appearances complete the story of its existence. A 

 specimen was captured alive off the island in 1821 or 1822, 

 a few years after the last individual had been taken in the 

 Orkneys on Papa Westray in 1813. And with an individual 

 captured on St Kilda in 1840, the history of the Garefowl 

 in Scotland comes to an end. It may have lingered on for 

 a few more years in Iceland or the Faroe Islands, but about 

 1844 or 1845 the Garefowl disappeared from the world of 

 living things. 



THE GANNET AND THE FULMAR 



Fortunately not all the sea-birds upon which the in- 

 habitants of the isles depended for food have met the fate 

 of the Garefowl. No bird could well have been more useful 

 to the St Kildans than the Gannet or Solan Goose (Sula 

 bassana), whose oil and feathers were of inestimable value, 

 and whose carcases, to the number of over twenty thousand, 

 were preserved annually for winter fare. Of St Kilda and 

 its neighbours, Soay and Boreray, Martin wrote in 1703, 



The largest and two lesser Isles... abound with a Prodigious number of 

 Sea-fowl from March till September, the Solan Geese are very numerous 

 here in so much that the Inhabitants commonly keep yearly above twenty 

 thousand young and old in their little stone Houses of which there are 



