1912-1913-] Notes on the Solan-Goose. 35 



variety of waterfowl, by Mr M'Hattie, our city gardener. It 

 is gratifying to observe this being done, creating as it does an 

 interest in bird-life, and tending to cultivate a habit of observa- 

 tion in natural history among the young. The thousands of 

 people and the number of nurses with children who visit the 

 pond demonstrate this. The thanks of all naturalists are 

 therefore due to Mr M'Hattie for the opportunities thus 

 afforded for studying nature at our own doors. 



The gannet is a bird of passage, migrating southward on 

 the approach of winter and returning north again in the 

 spring. As the swallow and cuckoo are generally regarded 

 as the harbingers of summer, so the gannet is looked upon by 

 fishermen as the forerunner of shoals of herring, which, except 

 during the nesting season, determine the migrations of these 

 birds. 



It is, I think, unfortunate that the writer of the " Nature 

 Note " in ' The Scotsman ' who saw the gannets on the 

 chimney-pots of the Caledonian Station Hotel should not 

 have given us his name. As, however, the note was well 

 written, and as it is inconceivable that any one could have 

 merely imagined such a thing, it has been by many accepted 

 as accurate. On the other hand, there are several with whom 

 I have discussed the matter who affirm that the birds must 

 have been black-backed or herring gulls. A writer signing 

 himself " A Lover of Wild Birds " stated he saw a gannet 

 " sitting on the chimney - pot of a house in the row of 

 tenements in Falcon Avenue." " The bird," he said, " was 

 apparently the size of the domestic goose." As all of you, I 

 presume, have seen a domestic goose, it will require a long 

 stretch of the imagination to accept the statement that " the 

 great white bird " was a gannet. 



As you are all aware, after the Nature Note appeared in 

 ' The Scotsman ' that gannets had been seen sitting on chimney- 

 pots of the Caledonian Station Hotel, I wrote and asked if any 

 others had seen this wonderful sight, as with the thousands of 

 people constantly passing and repassing, surely some others 

 must have seen them. There was not a single reply to my 

 letter in ' The Scotsman,' though, as already said, " A Lover of 

 Wild Birds " wrote that he saw one sitting on the top of a 

 house in Falcon Avenue. I had, however, a private letter 



