178 THE BIRDS OF DEVOX. 



■white backs aud imderparts, with black tips to their wings and blue 

 lines down the toes, are very handsome, and do not attain their full dress 

 until the sixth year. Young birds are grey ; and year after year become 

 gradually whiter. There is a certain stage when they assume a curious 

 plumage marked upon the mantle in alternate squares of black and white, 

 like a chess-board. Where they go to when they are in this stage of 

 plumage -we cannot well say, as they are then extremely rare and are 

 seldom met with, even off such a great metropolis of Gannets as the Bass 

 Hock at the entrance of the Firth of Forth. In the winter-time old birds 

 lose a good deal of the straw-yellow upon the head, which is then almost 

 white. Gannets are common off the Cornish coast during the autumn 

 and winter, following the pilchards into the bays, but have no nesting- 

 station on anj' of the cliffs or on the Scilly Islands. 



Two nestling birds in the A. M. M. are said to have been taken from 

 the clifls between Exmouth and Budleigh Salterton not later than 1801, 

 but there is now no breeding-place on the south coast of the county. 

 Immature birds seem to be generally rare at all seasons on the south 

 coast (A. von H., Zool. 1874, p. 3906; J. G., Zool. 1878, p. 53, and 

 1887, p. 377) ; but the adults are very common, and appear to remain 

 for the greater portion of the year, viz. from Sejjtember to !May. They, 

 however, usually keep well out at sea, except when following shoals of 

 pilchards, herrings, and sprats, then approaching the shore in large 

 numbers, and may be seen dashing into the water after their finny prey. 

 Adults are often brought to the bird-stuffers at Exeter and Exmouth in 

 January and February. An immature bird in its dark grey white- 

 spotted plumage was killed off Exmouth after the stormy weather in 

 October 181)1 ; and five or six occurred on the Kingsbridge estuary about 

 the same time. Thej' were jneked up in an exhausted and dying con- 

 dition. At Plymouth Gannets are frequently brought in by the fishermen 

 during the early months of the year, being captured cither by baited 

 hooks or by becoming entangled in the herring-nets off that port (J. G., 

 Zool. 1879, p. 200). 



We remember seeing many j-ears ago amongst the papers of Col. 

 Montagu, kindly lent to us by our friend the late llev. J. Hellins, of 

 Exeter, figures and description of a mite named by him Cdhdaria hassani, 

 which he discovered livins; in the air-cells under the skin of the Gannet. 



