1370 The Zoologist — September, 1868. 



could be sent crashing down the precipice : I have to use great 

 caution in not displacing them, as a stumble against the meshes 

 of the net would send the whole lot clown. The birds, as they 

 perch on the rock or come down to their eggs in the crannies, 

 get entangled in the net, and in struggling the}' only get held the 

 faster, some of them getting entangled and doubled up in a remarkable 

 manner. But far below me I see the climber, after resetting several 

 nets, tie the birds together and pitch them down, when they fall into 

 the sea with a great splash and remain floatiug about. I have leisure 

 to examine the haunts of the rock-birds while I wait for the climber. 

 I climb higher up the rocks, to a place where the razorbills are 

 sitting close together. They allow me to approach almost within 

 arm's length, and then dart down into the sea. They lay their single 

 egg on the bare rock, without a vestige of a nest, generally laying in a 

 crack or fissure of the rock, where their eggs are screened from the 

 observation of the great blackbacked and lesser blackbacked gulls, 

 which, as the cragsmen tell me, devour their eggs. I scramble to a 

 huge mass of rock against which other masses have fallen, and in the 

 fissures I find lots of richly-marked eggs. The egg of the razorbill is 

 not unlike that of the guillemot, only blunter at the thin end, and 

 the ground colour is generally white or dull light cream or brown, 

 speckled, often very richly, with red and brown. The eggs which 

 abound on Ailsa are more richly marked and speckled with minute 

 spots than specimens I obtained at Flamborough Head and Bempton, 

 where they had generally a white ground, sparingly speckled with 

 dark brown. The shell is extremely thick. The climber now coming 

 up, we shoulder the bunches of birds and proceed along the rocks to 

 several more nets, carefully avoiding the loose masses of rock, and 

 leaping from rock to rock. We kill the birds by wringing their necks; 

 we tie them in bunches, and, where we can, pitch them into the sea 

 or down on the beach beneath. Here the birds are in great quantities, 

 and the noise they make is terrible ; the deep baying of the guillemots, 

 the groaning of the razorbills, as we approach, and the wail of the. 

 kittiwakes, make a horrible clamour, enough to make one's blood run 

 cold to hear them. The eye is almost dazzled by the multitude of 

 ilickering wings, and as 1 look down I am almost tempted to throw 

 myself over into the bright sea. Taking a wee pull at the whiskey- 

 flask I feel better, and while the climber is busy with the birds, 

 I climb to the guillemot's roosts and see their breeding-places. The 

 guillemot prefers to lay apart from the razorbills, but I have several 



