196 EARLY ANNALS OF ORNITHOLOGY 
all other birds, of whatever kind they be. These Geese come 
in the month of April and May to this island, and then every- 
body must be quiet, but when they have begun to make their 
nests they are not frightened at any noise. The people of 
Edinburgh sell their feathers (which are nice for making 
beds) dearly enough to their neighbours, who pay twenty- 
five shillings [Scotch, worth a penny] for one Goose. Each 
of these Geese lays one egg, and that at least once in the year. 
They place their eggs so cleverly that if anyone takes one out 
of the nest, he cannot put it back in the same place. They 
do not sit on their eggs like other birds, but set the sole of 
their foot on the egg, and thus hatch the young one. While 
they are chicks they have ashen-grey feathers, which become 
white when they are full grown. They have a long neck, 
like the Crane’s, and a very sharp beak, as long as our longest 
finger, and yellow [? white] in colour. The bone which we 
commonly call “‘ the bril”’ [the furculum] in other birds can 
be separated from the breast-bone, but in these Geese it 
cannot; indeed, so firm is it that no force can divide 
it, and it is attached in this manner to the breast-bone in 
order that when they chase the Herrings, and plunge 
into the sea, they should not break their necks by their 
extreme violence. In the month of August [most of] the 
young ones are taken and are sold to the neighbours at a 
high price, and the others fly away until the following year. 
Many of them, nevertheless, are killed in the following 
manner. The sailors prepare a smooth board, and make 
it white, and fasten herrings on it; which board they make 
fast to the stern of a fishing-boat. The Geese, seeing the 
Herrings, try to seize them with their beak, and drive it so 
deep into the board that they cannot pull it out again, and 
thus are taken, or rather take themselves. Moreover, if 
these Geese alight so far from the sea that they cannot see 
it, they can neither raise their bodies from the ground nor 
fly away.” 
The notion that the ege of a Solan Goose when once taken 
up cannot be replaced, which the people of the place seem to 
have also told William Harvey in 1641, is a fiction, but a very 
persistent one, for we get it again from Morer in 1702 and 
from Defne in 1722. 
