i 4 8 DELIBERATE DESTRUCTION OF ANIMAL LIFE 

 "BIRD-BUTTER" AND BIRDS' EGGS 



The value of the sea-birds was greatly increased by the 

 fat they yielded, which in the hands of the St Kildans was 

 converted into a highly nutritious butter-substitute, a kind 

 of bird-butter. Martin has described how they manufactured 

 the fat of their sea- fowls into " their great and beloved 

 Gatholicon, the Giben, i.e. the fat of their fowls, with which 

 they stuff the stomach of a Solan Goose, in fashion of a 

 pudding." 



"This Giben? he says, "is by daily Experience found to be a sovereign 

 Remedy for the Healing of Green Wounds.... They boil the Sea-plants, 

 Dulse and Slake, melting the 'Giben' upon them instead of Butter.... They 

 use this 'giben' with their Fish, and it is become the common Vehicle that 

 conveys all the Food down their Throats." 



In the earlier days, when the Great Auk was abundant, its 

 capacious stomach seems to have been preferred as a re- 

 pository for the bird-butter, on the same ground that the 

 Greenlanders found it to be the most efficient float for their 

 harpoons. 



The destruction of birds' eggs for food has also had some 

 effect upon the bird population. A sixteenth century manu- 

 script in the Advocates' Library in Edinburgh (MS. 31. 2. 6) 

 states of the inhabitants of St Kilda that "thair daily 

 exercitation is maist in delving and labouring the ground, 

 taking of foullis and gaddering their eggis, quharon they 

 leif for the maist pairt of their fude," and Martin calculated 

 that during a three weeks' residence on the island, the 

 members of his own boat's crew and that of the Steward 

 collected "Sixteen Thousand Eggs of Sea-Fowl." The 

 cliff-climbers of Shetland and Orkney, too, were renowned 

 for the success, as for the hardihood of their raids. But the 

 effect on birds which frequent every ledge of a suitable 

 rocky coast in numbers innumerable, is less patent than that 

 upon land birds which occur in more limited numbers. The 

 Times of 1871 recorded that so ruthlessly were Lapwings 

 robbed of their eggs, which as a delicacy commanded $d. to 

 6d. each, that, at that time, the bird was almost exterminated 

 in the north of England, and the Statutory Orders protecting 

 Lapwings' eggs at the present day are a sign of the reality 

 of this destruction throughout the country. 



