Birds. 11^1 



but ended abruptly in as regular a line as a military encampment. 

 Through the midst of the nesls were several open spaces, like lanes, 

 made quite smooth by the continued trampling of the birds, which 

 seemed to be used for play-grounds ; these generally extended to the 

 brink of the precipice, and reminded me very much of the sliding 

 places of otters. 



The birds were feeding principally on herring, but also on capelin 

 filled with spawn, some fiue-lookiug mackerel, a few squids, and in 

 one instance a codfish weighing at least two pounds. The surface 

 was swarming with a species of Staphylinus that subsisted on the fish 

 dropped by the birds. Occasionally a nest could be seen in which 

 the single egg had not been deposited, and perhaps one in two or 

 three hundred witli a newly laid one ; on all the rest the gannets 

 were already sitting, and though none of the eggs were as yet hatched, 

 many of them contained fully formed chicks. On being approached 

 the birds manifested but slight symptoms of fear, and could hardly be 

 driven from their nests ; occasionally one move bold would actually 

 attack us. Their number on the summit could be very easily and 

 accurately determined by measuring the surface occupied by them ; 

 by a rough computation I made it to be about fifty thousand pairs, 

 and probably half as many more breed upon the remaining portion of 

 the rock and on the Little Bird. 



All the birds I saw were in adult plumage, differing in this respect 

 from those breeding in the Bay of Fundy, where many were young 

 birds. The egg of the American bird has not, I think, been described. 

 Audubon was unable, on account of the weather, to ascend the rock, 

 and 1 think his description was without doubt taken from a European 

 specimen. 



In shape and general appearance the egg is more like that of the 

 brown pelican than of any other North American bird, and it is some- 

 limes stained with blood, as that commonly is. The cretaceous or 

 calcareous coating is thicker than it is on the egg of any other bird 

 that I am acquainted with, and it is very generally marked with 

 scratches and furrows, as if deposited in a soft state ; in one specimen 

 this coating is two millimetres in thickness, nearly one-twelfth of an 

 inch ; so that the egg, though emptied of its contents, feels nearly as 

 heavy as an ordinary one that has not been blown. In shape there is 

 a greater tendency to elongation or flattening of the ellipse than in 

 the pelicans. The colour when first laid is a chalky white, which 

 soon becomes a dirty drab. 



Cormorant {Phalacrocorax carbo). On the 26th of June I had the 



