SEVENTEENTH CENTURY 195 
Life of Edward II. A photograph of the figures by Mr. 
Donald Payler, giving their exact size as in the map, which 
accompanies the poem, is reproduced. 
1633. Lorp Writ1am Howarp. 
Here it may be convenient to refer to certain passages in 
The Household Books of Lord William Howard of Naworth, 
a border castle in Cumberland.* On August 25th, 1612, the 
larderer writes: ‘‘My Lord Crainston’s man bringing solom- 
geese, Vs.” On August 14th, 1623, he enters: ‘To the 
Lord Crainston’s man bringing iiij Solamosse geese ij, iiij,” 
and on August 23rd, 1633—ten years later—“‘To 2 boyes 
bringing 10 sollemgeese from my Lord Cranston X.s.” It is 
possible that in the second entry, not Gannets, but domestic 
geese from “the moss,” or grasslands of the Solway, are 
intended. Mr. H. S. Gladstone finds these lands marked as 
Solanmoss or Sollan Mosse in an old map of 1654, see the 
“ Scottish Naturalist,” 1912, p. 90. 
1654. RopertT GORDON. 
Sir William Brereton’s account of the Bass Rock in 1635, 
and William Harvey’s in 1641, entertaining as they are, 
having been given at length in another work,f need hardly 
be repeated, but the story of the Bass by Robert Gordon 
of Stralloch seems too important to be omitted. It is here 
quoted from an excellent translation supplied by Mr. H. 8. 
Gladstone, from Blaeu’s great Dutch “‘ Geography,” to which 
Gordon contributed.t 
“On the very top [of the Bass Rock in Scotland] is a 
little chapel, and a remarkably clear spring; there is barely 
enough pasture for twenty sheep. The inhabitants have no 
coals in the winter, but burn for the most part the nests of 
birds. This island has (besides other birds which the [adjacent] 
island of May also produces), a quite wonderful bird usually 
called the Bass Goose, somewhat smaller than a Common 
Goose, but much fatter, for they live on the Herrings, and 
have the same taste when eaten. They surpass in fatness 
* Printed for the Surtees Soc. (Trans. LVIII.). 
+ “The Gannet: a Bird with a History,” pp. 197-201. 
t ‘Geographia Blavianae, Volumen Sextum,’’ 1654 (Lib. XII., XTIIT.). 
