280 ALClDiE. 



of the shag, jackdaw^ and raven ; starlings, though building in 

 great numbers amid the deserted tenements of man on the island, 

 are not named as frequenting the cliffs for that purpose. The 

 birds seen here, and not at Flamborough Head, were the greater 

 and lesser black-backed gulls and the sea-eagle '."^ Although it is 

 possible that all the birds frequenting those localities may not 

 have come under the notice of the respective authors, yet it is a 

 striking and interesting circumstance that, at Horn Head, and 

 the adjacent range of cliifs, every species named as breeding about 

 the Yorkshire and Sutherlandshire haunts is found, and in addi- 

 tion to them nine others, namely, the black guillemot, tlie herring 

 and common gull — the oyster-catcher— the house-martin, grey 

 crow, chough, buzzard, and kestrel. 



The birds now snared, or " dulled," as it is called at Horn 

 Head, for the sake of their feathers, are puffins, razorbills, guil- 

 lemots, and kittiwakes; — all the other species of Lams are 

 too wary to be thus gulled. In less than two liom-s my informant 

 has snared seventeen dozen, or above two handred birds, and 

 thirty-six dozen were known by a gentleman of my acquaintance 

 to be taken within a similar time by two men : many years ago 

 these feathers produced \2>d. per lb., but now (1832) they bring 

 only Q\d. Birds breeding in caves here are sometimes caught in 

 nets drawn across their entrances. They are alarmed on their nests 

 or roosting-places by loud shouting or the firing of guns within the 

 cave, and, when endeavouring to make their exit, are captured. On 

 particular inquiry of bird-catchers who are natives of the Horn, I 

 was told that from four to six persons have lost their lives by this 

 dangeroTis occupation within the preceding twenty years. AVlieu, 

 in June 1834, at a breeding station of rock-bu-ds on the largest 

 of the South Islands of Arran, off Galway Bay, similar to the 

 Horn, we learned that birds are in hke manner snared for the sake 

 of their feathers, and that a man assisted by a boy had thus taken 

 three hundred razorbills in one night. Willughby, nearly two cen- 

 turies ago, with reference to the Isle of Man, remarked — the Manks- 



* ' Tom- iu Suthcrlaiul/" vol. i. p. 100. 



