THE PUFFIN. 28] 



men " take the birds [razorbills, guillemots, aud puffins] them- 

 selves when they are sitting upon their eggs, with snares fastened 

 to the top of long poles, and so put about their necks" (p. 334). 

 Mr. John M'Gillivray, in an excellent paper on the Birds, &c. 

 of St. Kilda, published in the ' Edinburgh Philosophical Journal ' 

 for January 1842, mentions the puffin, by far the most abundant 

 species of bird there, being captured in a similar manner, and 

 that by such means " as many as three hundred may be taken in 

 the course of the day by an expert bird-catcher" (p. 67). He 

 visited the island in July 1840. Mr. James Wilson, vrho did so 

 in August 1841, gives a very full and interesting account of the 

 island in his ' Voyage Round the Coast of Scotland aud the 

 Isles,^ and mentions a more ingenious device for capturing puf- 

 fins. He says — " These birds are caught by stretching a piece 

 of cord along the stony places where they chiefly congregate. To 

 this cord are fastened, at intervals of a few inches, numerous hair 

 nooses, and from time to time, when the countless puffins are 

 paddling upon the siu'face, in go their little web feet, they get 

 noosed round the ankle, and no sooner begin to flap and flutter 

 than down rushes a ruthless widow woman, and twists their necks. 

 Her dog had acted a useful part, not only in driving more distant, 

 or otherwise inaccessible birds, from their roosting-places towards 

 the nooses, but by catching them dexterously in its mouth." The 

 widow here alluded to lived chiefly on the puffin in its season 

 here. 



The statement of the gamekeeper and others at Horn Head 

 respecting the puffins' departure about the 12th of August, is, 

 doubtless, correct in general terms. Only about half-a-dozen 

 birds were observed on the sea between that headland and Tory 

 Island on the 8th of August, 1845 ;* and on the 1st of that 

 month in 1850, a few only came under the notice of a gen- 

 tleman walking along the summit of the whole range of cliifs.t 

 Many specimens of the razorbill have been procured in that 



* Mr. G. C. ITyndmaii. t Mr. R. Taylor. 



