370 THE ZOOLOGIST. 



force against the sides. It was as if some one kept throwing 

 clods of turf against the canvass. 



Unable to sleep, we determined to go out, and either frighten 

 or kill some of the Shearwaters. Armed with a stick each, we 

 walked about two hundred yards, and caught or killed all we 

 could carry — forty to fifty — in about half-an-hour. On the 

 steep slope over the sea we had few chances, because the birds 

 were quickly able to fly ; but further up, amid the heath and 

 bracken and on bare level places, the Shearwaters cannot rise, 

 but flutter along the ground twenty, thirty, and even a hundred 

 yards or still further, if there is no hillock from which they can 

 rise, and here they could be knocked over with ease. Even on 

 a moderate slope they cannot rise immediately, at all events 

 they did not do so, and probably if a Manx Shearwater were 

 placed on a level floor it might not be able to fly at all. Has 

 any one tried the experiment ? At all events facts are stubborn 

 things, and in the dim light of a summer's night, on Skomer 

 Island, in June this year, my friend and I caught or killed 

 numbers of Manx Shearwaters, fluttering over level ground or 

 down a moderate incline, quite unable to rise. Some of the 

 Shearwaters actually crowed in my hand as I carried them to 

 the tent by the legs. Our midnight raid had no effect whatever 

 in quieting the birds, and we got no sleep until after two in 

 the morning, when the noisy multitude began to enter their 

 holes again, and after three not a crow of a Shearwater was 

 heard until about ten the next night. It will thus be seen that 

 in summer-time the great bulk of the Manx Shearwaters feed 

 only five hours or thereabouts out of the twenty-four. They are 

 seventeen hours in the holes, during which time one might 

 travel all over Skomer Island and not see one, and very few were 

 noticed in the daytime at sea. 



I cannot agree with the Eev. Mr. Mathew, in describing the 

 noise made by the Shearwaters as a " soft, weird, and unearthly 

 chorus, though I have no doubt it " resembled nothing he had 

 ever listened to before." If there was one attribute of the noise 

 more striking than another, it was not only the want of softness, 

 but the hoarseness, or harshness, of the final "oo," or " co," or 

 " caw," sometimes shrieked desperately from the throats of the 

 flying Shearwaters. In the holes, and at a distance, the noise 

 appeared more subdued. 



