174 BRITISH BIRDS. 



naturalist. The romantic wildness of their situation, 

 their difficulty of access, and the strange manners and 

 customs of their sequestered population, have all 

 appealed strongly to the curious inquirer, and we thus 

 have a considerable mass of information concerning them 

 and, incidentally, their natural history, compiled at a 

 time when the fauna of far more accessible and perhaps 

 important districts remained neglected and unrecorded. 



Far out in the wild Atlantic, over one hundred miles 

 from the mainland of Scotland, lies the lonely island of 

 St. Kilda, the " Hirta " of the ancients. Although 

 mentioned briefly by Joh. de Fordun (oh. circa, 1380) 

 in his " Scoti-chronicon," and by Boethius (1465-1536) 

 in the " Scotorum Historia," published in 1527, the first 

 detailed account we have of the Island of St. Kilda, 

 and certainly the first made from personal observation, 

 is that dealt with in the present article. It was prepared 

 by Martin Martin, a factor of the Clan Macleod, who in 

 the year 1697, in the summer season and " to the almost 

 manifest hazard of the author's life," visited the island 

 in company with Mr. John Campbell, minister of Hawis.* 



During Martin's stay in St. Kilda, which extended over 

 three weeks, he devoted a certain amount of time to the 

 observation of the birds of the island, and amongst them 

 to the Garefowl, or Great Auk, and it is chiefly owing 

 to his description of this extinct and famous bird that 

 Martin's book — curious and entertaining as it otherwise is 

 — is of such interest to the naturalist of the present day. 



Of Martin Martin we know but little. He was born, 

 as we are told in the preface to his book, " A late Voyage 

 to St. Kilda," " in one of the most spacious and fertile 

 isles in the west of Scotland* ; and besides his liberal 

 education at the University, had the advantage of seeing 

 foreign places, and the honour of conversing with some 



* For further particvilars as to the early history of St. Kilda, vide 

 Seton's "St. Kilda, past and present." Edinburgh, 1 vol., 8vo, 

 MDCCCLXXXIII 



t Possibly the Isle of Skye. 



