Mr Evans on the Birds of the Island of Eigg. 445 



in Eum at a considerable elevation. Coming down to 1859 

 we find the following interesting passage in Hugh Miller's 

 " Cruise of the Betsey " (p. 89), the latter part of which 

 substantially agrees with what the Eigg folks gravely assert 

 to this day : " The puffin, a comparatively rare bird in the 

 Inner Hebrides, builds, as I was told, in great numbers 

 in the continuous line of precipice which, after sweeping 

 for a full mile round the bay of Laig, forms the pinnacled 

 rampart here, and then, turning another angle of the 

 island, runs on parallel to the coast for about six miles 

 more. In former times the puffin furnished the islanders, as 

 in St Kilda, with a staple article of food, in those hungry 

 months of summer in which the stores of the old crop had 

 begun to fail, and the new crop had not yet ripened ; and 

 the people of Eigg, taught by their necessities, were bold 

 cragsmen. But men do not peril life and limb for the mere 

 sake of a meal, save when they cannot help it ; and the 

 introduction of the potato has done much to put out the 

 practice of climbing for the bird, except among a few young 

 lads who find excitement enough in the work to pursue it 

 for its own sake as an amusement. I found among the 

 islanders what was said to be a piece of the natural history 

 of the puffin, sufficiently apocryphal to remind one of the 

 famous passage in the history of the barnacle, which traced 

 the lineage of the bird to one of the pedunculated cirripedes, 

 and the lineage of the cirripede to a log of wood. The puffin 

 feeds its young, say the islanders, on an oily scum of the sea, 

 which renders it such an unwieldy mass of fat, that about 

 the time when it should be beginning to fly, it becomes 

 unable to get out of its hole. The parent bird, not in the 

 least puzzled, however, treats the case medicinally, and — like 

 mothers of another two-legged genus, who, when their 

 daughters get over stout, put them through a course of 

 reducing acids to bring them down — feeds it on sorrel leaves 

 for several days together, till, like a boxer under training, it 

 gets thinned to a proper weight, and becomes able, not only 

 to get out of its cell, but also to employ its wings." 



The islanders have not yet altogether lost their relish for 

 the "Fachach," and still enjoy a dish of it when it can be 



