2216 The Zoologist — ^July, 1870. 



they would feel themselves amply repaid for all their exertions. If 

 the Bill never serves any other object than to preserve to our sea- 

 faring population an almost constant fund of amusement and variety, 

 it has well done its work. Barren indeed would the ocean fields 

 appear without their winged wanderers. 



8.30 p. M. Sighted the outer Fame light, on the Longstone, the 

 scene of Grace Darling's devoted heroism. 



May 9. 5.30 a. m. Off the coast of Berwickshire, St. Abb's Head 

 bearing N. ^ W. four miles : becalmed. Many gannets seen, flying in 

 pairs about two feet above the water, and all heading for the Bass 

 Rock; only noticed a single immature bird. The flight of the gannet 

 is peculiar; half a dozen slow beats of his great black-lipped wings, 

 and then a sail or glide ; then a repetition of the beats, and so on. 

 Guillemots and razorbills numerous: a single pair of black guillemots 

 seen, in transition plumage, flying towards the mouth of the Firth. 



11.30 a. Ai. Towed into Berwick Harbour. Gannets flying out to 

 sea, others wheeling and hovering overhead like terns, but in no 

 instance did I observe any of the numerous birds now in sight strike 

 at a fish. At the mouth of the Tweed, terns were fishing; the first we 

 had seen. This afternoon noticed the first pair of swifts; they were 

 hawking round the keep of the romantic old border fortress of Norham. 

 The Museum at Berwick contains a small collection illustrative of local 

 Zoology : birds from the coast of Berwickshire and Northumberland ; 

 also a- case or two of eggs, principally collected from the Fame 

 Islands, — amongst these those of the roseate tern, also fieldfare's eggs 

 ticketed "Berwickshire": the fish include specimens of the garfish, 

 bonilo and Norway haddock [Scoi-poemi norvegica) : the gem, however, 

 of the collection is a magnificent and very perfect skull of the auroch 

 {Bos primigenius) from Caithness. 



May 11. Walked from Buramonth along the Berwickshire coast 

 towards St. Abb's Head: the scenery magnificently wild and grand; 

 cliffs rising perpendicularly from the sea to the height, in some places, 

 of five hundred feet, their base inconceivably broken and dislocated: 

 masses, in bulk like cathedral towers, standing isolated from the parent 

 cliff, surrounded by lesser rocks and heaps of boulders, small only in 

 comparison, hurled and piled together in the wildest confusion — long 

 knife-like ridges of contorted silurian rock running out from the coast, 

 their edges jagged and splintered like gigantic saws, around which the 

 restless sea, even in the calmest weather, is ever churning itself into 

 acres of snowy foam. Beyond these dark skerries, some just awash, 



