THE GANNET. 173 
The egg is incubated by both parents in turn. The parent about to 
occupy the nest spreads the webs of one foot carefully on the egg, then laying 
the other foot as closely over its fellow as possible, it sits down, one is 
surprised to find, without breaking the egg. Early in July, the young Gannet is 
hatched.* It comes forth as a nude slate-blue, pot-bellied, soft squab, with sealed 
eyelids. By the time it is five or six weeks old, however, this ungainly, and 
unattractive, gelatinous mass, becomes clothed with long fluffy down, of the purest 
white, the face and throat alone remaining nude and black; it is then as 
charming an object, as it was previously the opposite. 
During incubation, the male assiduously fetches food for his mate, not in 
his bill, but in his stomach, from which he disgorges it by her side. 
Powerful on the wing, the Gannet makes light of the distance away that its 
feeding grounds may be. Mr. Seebohm says that it has been known to go, even 
a couple of hundred miles, from its nest to forage for its home supplies. 
The young one is chiefly fed by her, with, at first, soft macerated material 
from her stomach, which the young one intrudes its head into her throat to 
obtain. As it grows it is given larger and larger morsels. When the young 
bird has lost all the down from its body, except on the head and neck, it 
presents a very comical look of wearing a full bottomed legal wig, and in this 
stage it goes by the name, on the Bass Rock, of ‘‘ Parliamentary Goose.” The 
white down of the chick is gradually replaced by feathers; and by the time the 
bird is from two to three months old, it is fully fledged, and able to leave the 
nest. Above, this first plumage is deep brown, each feather being tipped with 
a triangular white spot; while below, it is buff, the feathers being tipped with 
brown. 
It is only in the fifth year, that the Gannet attains its fully mature plumage. 
It moults for the first time during its second autumn, and then in every 
succeeding autumn, loosing, each year, more and more of the brown mottling, 
till it is quite white, with the exception of the black primaries and wing-coverts, 
and the buff neck. The latter is always deepest in hue immediately after the 
moult, and during the courting season, after which it fades again. 
On leaving the nest and taking to the water, the young Gannet is quite 
unable to fly; and it is, consequently, compelled to live, for some weeks, entirely 
on the surface of the sea, swimming about and foraging for itself, for it is then 
quite neglected by its parents. 
* The Rev. H. A. Macpherson writes:—“In the cold and stormy summer of 1897, many of the young Gannets, 
hatched upon the Bass Rock, had donned their fluffy white plumage by the 27th of June; though the majority 
were still black and featherless on that date.” 
Vor. III 2D 
