7] 2 Letters, Extracts, and Notes. 



interesting birds. Out of the breeding-season they are 

 extremely timid, though when they are breeding they stand 

 up for their nests and for their young. The young are 

 beautiful little creatures, covered with the purest white down, 

 resembling fluff. Dr. Forbes was able to get a number of 

 photographic studies of the Gannets, which, when they go 

 to fish, afford the most wonderful spectacle to be seen in 

 that region. Flocks of them numbering from 10,000 to 

 20,000 at a time will be seen diving and then rising high 

 into the air. They go down like so many rockets into 

 the sea, which is ploughed up as if a fusillade were being 

 fired into it. 



The amount of fish consumed by these birds is gigantic. 

 Each one of them will eat from eight to ten pounds a day. 

 Dr. Forbes kept a number of them in captivity and fed them 

 to determine how much guano would be produced on a diet 

 of a certain kind of fish.. He then calculated the relative 

 proportion during the nesting season that each pair of birds 

 with the young would deposit. In this way he was able to 

 make a very close estimate of the quantity they would 

 deposit in a period of, say, four years, and from that estimate 

 he divided up the whole of the guauo archipelago into zones. 

 He made certain practical suggestions for the protection of 

 the birds with a view to allowing them to deposit and to have 

 a rigorous close season and also a period of rest in each of four 

 years. Only one zone would be worked every year, thus 

 leaving a period for recovery. 



Another suggestion made by Dr. Forbes was that an 

 endeavour should be made to remove the sharp points of the 

 rocks upon which the birds alight, thereby increasing the 

 surface area. During the nesting season the birds live on 

 the islands and when it is over they frequent all the rocks 

 which rise above the surface of the sea, but the latter are 

 so precipitous that a large amount of the guano is lost, and 

 Dr. Forbes believes that an enormous new collecting area 

 might be added to that already existing by the adoption of 

 the expedient proposed by him. 



