220 EARLY ANNALS OF ORNITHOLOGY 
upon Caldey island, where they found eggs in abundance of 
Terns and “ puits.”* By June 26th the travellers, still stop- 
ping to collect flowers as they rode along, had left Wales 
and were in Cornwall, where the following day an entry in the 
journal runs: “‘ Friday, June 27th, [1662], we passed on towards 
Padstow .. . Near Padstow we saw great flocks of Cornish 
choughs. The gannets, they told us, were almost of the bigness 
of a goose, white, the tips only of their wings black; they 
have a strange way of catching them, by tying a pilchard to 
a board, and fastening it so that the bird may see it, who 
comes down with so great swiftness for his prey that he breaks 
his neck against the board. . . . Monday, June 30th, we rode 
over the sands to St. Ives . . . We passed over to Godreve 
Island, which is nothing but a rock, about one league distant 
from St. Ives, to the north-east near the land, upon which in 
time of year build great store of birds, viz. gulls, cormorants, 
razorbills, guillems and puffins. The razorbills are not so 
numerous on this island as the guillems, or kiddaws, of which 
many scores of young ones lie dead here. Here they call the 
puffins, popes ; and the guillems kiddaws. We saw many of those 
birds which they call gannets, flying about on the water. This 
bird hath long wings, and a long neck, and flyeth strongly. 
Possibly it may be the Catarractes. He preys upon pilchards, 
the shoals whereof great multitudes of these fowls constantly 
pursue. Another bird they told us of here called wagell, 
which pursues and strikes at the small gull so long, till out of 
fear it mutes, and what it voids the wagell follows and greedily 
devours, catching it sometimes before it has fallen down to 
the water. This several seamen affirmed themselves to have 
oftentimes seen.’ 
It is curious that Ray never seems to have realised that 
the Solan Goose and the Cornish Gannet were one and the same. 
In “ The Ornithology” (p. 349) he says: ‘““We saw many of 
these Gannets flying, but could not kill one.” Had they done 
so their identity would have been discovered. This being, 
* This is not without interest, because the Black-headed Gull, or puit, 
in modern times was not known to Murray Mathew as breeding at Caldey, or 
on any of the Pembrokeshire islands (‘‘ Birds of Pembrokeshire,’’ 1894, p. 95). 
t “Select Remains,” pp. 268, 273, 275. What Ray was told of the 
Wagell better fits the habits of the Arctic Skua than any species of Gull. 
See Newton’s “ Dictionary of Birds,” p. 1017. 
