21G8 The Zoologist — June, 1870. 



with her breast and bill into a secure position. Keeping my ej-e 

 fixed on the ringed guillemot, I rapidly scramble down, and clap my 

 Scotch bonnet over her before she can struggle out of the crevice : 

 the egg she is hatching is a rich green, spotted with black: both bird 

 and egg are in ray cabinet: the eggs of several more ringed birds we 

 find to be the green varieties. The ringed guillemots occupy the 

 same ledges, breeding promiscuously with the common guillemot. 

 The proportion of ringed guillemots is about one in twenty. 



As I want a few rock birds for stuffing, to imitate a rock breeding- 

 station as much as I can, I call Mac, who stands under a sloping face 

 of rock, and fire at several birds, which he catches as they fall down, 

 and in this way procure six or eight. We could sweep whole ledges of 

 birds into the water, but not one of them could be picked up, and to 

 shoot breeding birds for mere sport seems to me inhuman, cowardly 

 and cruel. 



The sun is sinking out of sight, blushing that all his warmth should 

 fail to produce any tree-life on these barren, storm-tossed islands, 

 bathing the cold rock with rosy light and glorifying the myriad 

 sea-fowl till each glows with the purest rose-colour. The wind has 

 sunk to rest, leaving, afar off, dark masses of clouds, through 

 which the heights of Rum and the splintered peaks of Skye 

 rise to bid the sun good night and catch his last warm rays. 

 As the smoke from my gun floats up, the whole air seems alive 

 with birds; the echo is yet volleying from rock to rock: through 

 the sound, and overpowering it as it dies away, burst out the 

 screams and cries and demon laughter of the sea-fowl, filling the air 

 with sound. T again fire. Bang ! as the echo touches the opposite 

 rock the puffins shoot into the air from their burrows, and flicker 

 straight down into the sea; the razorbills above me seem to fall into 

 the sea — they shoot past so swiftly that the eye cannot follow them in 

 the maze of birds ; the guillemots beneath throw themselves ofi" the 

 ledges, and plunging inlo the waves dive out of sight. On rocks 

 opposite, round the head of the bay, the guillemots and razorbills 

 throw themselves into the air, and sweeping down almost touch the 

 sea, then rising they fly round and round, backwards and forwards, 

 their legs spread out wide apart and their small wings flickering. The 

 kiitiwake gulls rise from their nests in alarm, and hover round me, 

 densely crowding, anxiously watching me, clamoroush', pleadingly 

 wailing, with soft flute-like notes, " kiltiw — e — a, kittiw — e — a," flying 

 so close that their pale slate-blue, black-tipped wings, almost brush 



