EGGS OF VARIOUS KINDS AS FOOD. 199 



sauces, where only the yellow portion of the egg is 

 used, and when high colour and high flavour are both 

 esteemed, two wild birds' eggs are considered equal to 

 three domestic ones. The flavour o£ an egg is determined 

 by the food of the bird, all or most of it residing in the 

 yellow portion. 



The number of eggs of the gulls — herring gull (Lams 

 argentatus, L. marinus, L. canus, &c., — sent to shore from 

 the Fern Islands, off" the Northumberland coast, for 

 culinary purposes, is said to be prodigious. 



From the cliffs of Bampton and Flamborough, men 

 descend by ropes to obtain the eggs of the guillemots 

 (Uria troile and U. grylle) and the razor-bill (Alca 

 tarda) or common auk. A good take will be 200 or 300 

 eggs at a time. They commence about the 14th of 

 May, and go on for about nine days, and at the end 

 of another nine days there will be a second run of 

 successful collecting. These find a ready sale at Brid- 

 lington and other places in the neighbourhood. In- 

 numerable quantities of the eggs of the gannet are 

 obtained annually on the Island of St. Kilda. Incredible 

 numbers of the eggs of the common auk are also 

 collected on the coasts of Labrador and elsewhere. 



So highly are the eggs of the sooty tern {Sterna 

 fuliginosa, Gmel.) esteemed, that collecting them is quite 

 a considerable trade. The eggs of the arctic tern {8. 

 arctica, Tem.) and of the black tern or wideawake 

 (Sydrochelidon nigra, Tem.) are excellent eating. 



A great resort for the plunder of sea-fowls' eggs are 

 the Pedro Keys, in the neighbourhood of Jamaica, 

 which are annually visited by boats from Port Royal. 

 The constant inhabitants of these rocks are several 

 species of booby {8ula./iber), gannets, terns and petrels. 

 The migratory visitors are ducks, herons, plovers, snipes, 

 sandpipers, curlews, and ibises. The months of March, 

 April, and May, are those of the egg harvest. The 

 Keys are open to all adventurers, but the egg gather- 

 ing is regulated by a custom which recognises the 

 first arrival as the admiral commanding for the season, 



