pebsident's address ■ 77 



with birds, the three hundred-feet cliff beneath us swarming 

 with Gannets, the blue sky above us filled with large birds 

 whose clamorous noise and hoarse croakings almost deafened us, 

 and then the view which we saw to the south, as we turned to 

 leave this delightful spot, — the Lothians lit up by the western 

 sun, Tantallon Castle, and the bold broken coast line — are ever 

 to be remembered. 



Our time having expired we descended to our companions, and 

 after a short examination of some of the plants growing near the 

 dungeon ruins embarked, and with much regret brought to a 

 close our hurried and imperfect visit to the Bass. 



Meanwhile our host and hostess had not forgotten to prepare 

 a comfortable dinner, which was hastily enjoyed by all, as train 

 time drawing near we were obliged to leave Canty Bay and its 

 pleasant neighbourhood with all speed. 



The great attraction and source of wealth of the Bass is the 

 Gannet or Solan Goose, Sula Bassana. How long this bird has 

 frequented this rock is entirely beyond the records of history, 

 but from the sixteenth century downward it has been frequently 

 mentioned by ornithologists and others who have visited the Bass 

 in order to observe its habits. The first author. Hector Boece, 

 among other quaint remarks concerning these birds, records the 

 tradition that the Solan Geese were produced from Barnacles 

 directly and spontaneously, but this mode of evolution, I need 

 scarcely mention, is held up to ridicule by the evolutionists and 

 others of the present day, who require more time than a few 

 days for the processes of Natural Selection as it is called, and 

 consider the rapid and direct evolution of a bird from a Barnacle 

 inconsistent with the slow modus operandi required by the modem 

 Evolution doctrine. 



Dr. "William Harvey, the discoverer of the circulation of the 

 blood, is the next writer who describes the Bass and its colony 

 of Solan Geese. He says, p. 208 : * 



' ' In the desert islands of the east coast of Scotland such flights 

 of almost every kind of sea-fowl congregate, that, were I to 



* The Works of William Harvey, M.D., by Robert Willis, M.D. Sydenham Society, 

 1847. 



