WAYSIDE NOTES. 5 
birds, and one Cormorant. Proceeding to Bude, in the after- 
noon, we saw a small flock of Peewits, about some wild ground 
about half-way on, but we did not find any eggs; though we 
extended in line over the ground to look for them we did not see 
anything. At Bude there was nothing worth noting, and the 
next day we drove on to Boscastle, passing another small flock 
of Peewits in the same sort of ground, which were also probably 
breeding. On arrival we took a walk on the cliffs on the Bude 
side of Boscastle, and saw a good many Herring Gulls breeding 
on the cliffs, the females mostly sitting, but one or two had 
young hatched and able to run about on the ledges of rock some 
way from the nest. There were also a good many Razorbills on 
the ledges of rock, some sitting and some flying up and down to 
the sea and back; we did not see any young ones, though at 
places we could look across some narrow inlets in the rocks and 
see the eggs quite plainly. We saw several Shags about the 
cliffs, evidently breeding, though we could not see their eggs like 
those of the Razorbill. At one place we saw a male Kestrel 
come out of a hole in the rock, and soon after the female went 
into the same hole, but whether they were sitting alternately or 
had young ones hatched we could not make out, as we could not 
see across into the hole, and it was impossible to get near it. We 
waited some considerable time, but did not see the female come 
out again, so she may have been in there for a spell of sitting. 
On our way back to the hotel we saw some boys who ought to 
have been at school, if the Hducation Act had been properly 
enforced, swimming a Puffin in the stream which runs down to 
the harbour, and a lot of sailors and ostlers looking on at them ; 
they had a string tied round his leg, and as he tried to dive in 
the shallow pools they kept pulling him back. The Society for 
the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals apparently had no agents 
in those parts! 
The next day, May the 21st, we walked along the cliff from 
Boscastle to Tintagel. There were immense numbers of Puffins 
breeding, especially on two steep rocky islands just off the 
coast. There was a place on each island where there was a 
certain amount of soil above the rocks, rather more than an acre 
on each island, and the Puffins had taken possession of these 
places, and pitted them all over with thousands of holes, each 
hole apparently containing its pair of Puffins; there was a 
