The Gam net. 173 



The egg is incubated by both parents in turn. The parent about to 

 occupy the nest spreads the webs of one foot carefully on the egg, then laying 

 the other foot as closely over its fellow as possible, it sits down, one is 

 surprised to find, without breaking the egg. Early in July, the young Gannet is 

 hatched.* It conies forth as a nude slate-blue, pot-bellied, soft .squab, with sealed 

 eyelids. By the time it is five or six weeks old, however, this ungainly, and 

 unattractive, gelatinous mass, becomes clothed with long fluffy down, of the purest 

 white, the face and throat alone remaining nude and black ; it is then as 

 charming an object, as it was previously the opposite. 



During incubation, the male assiduously fetches food for his mate, not in 

 his bill, but in his stomach, from which he disgorges it b}' her side. 



Powerful on the wing, the Gannet makes light of the distance away that its 

 feeding grounds may be. Mr. Seebohm saj's that it has been known to go, even 

 a couple of hundred miles, from its nest to forage for its home supplies. 



The young one is chiefly fed by her, with, at first, soft macerated material 

 from her stomach, which the young one intrudes its head into her throat to 

 obtain. As it grows it is given larger and larger morsels. When the 3-oung 

 bird has lost all the down from its body, except on the head and neck, it 

 presents a very comical look of wearing a full bottomed legal wig, and in this 

 stage it goes b}' the name, on the Bass Rock, of " Parliamentary' Goose."' The 

 white down of the chick is gradually replaced by feathers ; and b}- the time the 

 bird is from two to three months old, it is fully fledged, and able to leave the 

 nest. Above, this first plumage is deep brown, each feather being tipped with 

 a triangular white spot ; while below, it is buff, the feathers being tipped with 

 brown. 



It is only in the fifth year, that the Gannet attains its full}- mature plumage. 

 It moults for the first time during its second autumn, and then in ever}- 

 succeeding autumn, loosing, each year, more and more of the brown mottling, 

 till it is quite white, with the exception of the black primaries and wing-coverts, 

 and the buff neck. The latter is alwa3-s deepest in hue immediate!}- after the 

 moult, and during the courting season, after which it fades again. 



On leaving the nest and taking to the water, the ^-oung Gannet is quite 

 unable to fly ; and it is, consequentl}', compelled to live, for some weeks, entireh* 

 on the surface of the sea, swimming about and foraging for itself, for it is then 

 quite neglected b}- its parents. 



* The Rev. H. A. Macpherson ^vrite.s: — "In the cold aud sloruiy sunmier of 1S97. many of the %-ouiig Gaunets, 

 hatched upon the Bass Rock, had donned their fluff}- white plumage by the 27th of June : though the majority 

 were still black and featherless on that date." 



Vol. Ill 2 D 



