102 EARLY ANNALS OF ORNITHOLOGY 
of three days, and afterward, in flocks [orig.: agminatim] 
they take flight to southern parts for the whole winter, that 
there they may live, as it were, in summer; because, when 
it is winter with us, it is summer with the people of the south. 
These birds are very long-lived, a fact which the inhabitants 
have judged by marks upon some of them [orig. - Diutissime 
he aves vivunt, quod per quasdam insuper signatas incole | 
perpenderunt]. The produce of these birds supports thirty 
or forty men of the garrison upon the rock; and some rent 
is paid by them to the lord of the rock.” 
It will be observed that it was only because the young 
Solans were of service to man as food, and because their fat 
could be utilised in making drugs, that Major admits them 
into his chronicle. 
For any other reason birds would be regarded as too 
trivial to mention in a serious work of history : accordingly 
there is no allusion to the other species—Guillemot, Puffin, 
Kittiwake, ete.—which must have inhabited the Bass Rock 
in his day. 
Boece’s Cosmograuphe.—Hector Boece’s description of 
the Solan Geese is taken from Major, but what he says of 
other birds in his famous ‘“‘ Cosmographe and Description of 
Albion ” (1526) has been accepted as original, and is worth 
quoting. In Chapter XI., entitled “Of the gret plente of 
Haris, Hartis, and uthir wild Bestiall in Scotland. Of the 
mervellus nature of sindry Scottis Doggis ... ,” after 
speaking of these things, and of the noisome wolves, wild 
horses and foxes, and of hounds of marvellous wit, he 
continues :— 
“Of fowls, such as live by plunder, there are sundry 
kinds in Scotland; as Eagles, Falcons, Goshawks, Sparrow- 
Hawks, Merlins, and such-like fowls. Of water-fowls there is 
so great a number, that it is a wonder to hear. Manv other 
fowls are in Scotland, which are seen in no other part of the 
world ; as Capercaillie, a fowl larger than a Raven, which lives 
always on the bark [? buds] of trees. In Scotland are many 
more cocks and hens which eat nothing but seed, or crops 
of heather. Such are great numbers of Blackcocks and hens, 
not unlike to a Pheasant, both in quantity and savour of 
their flesh; but they have black feathers and red eyebrows. 
