2058 Birds. 



croup, and is peculiar to the Westmann Islands, under the dominion of the King of 

 Denmark, and St. Kilda. They subsist entirely upon the sea birds, principally the 

 puffin, which is in immense abundance : their means of taking them, by long rods with 

 nooses attached to them, and their extraordinary adroitness in clambering in pairs 

 among perpendicular cliffs, have been too often described to make it necessary for me 

 to occupy more of your space on the subject ; but when I state that eleven hundred 

 gannet are taken in a single night, it will give a good idea of their wonderful skill. 

 They keep their peat, which is merely cut from the surface of the soil, in small cairn- 

 like buildings of great antiquity. The present proprietor, Mr. Macleod, is most kind 

 and charitable to the people : he sent a large vessel laden with meal in the time of 

 the distress, and at the present moment has offered an annual stipend of £100, in ad- 

 dition to £50 previously given, to any clergyman who will undertake the spiritual 

 charge of these poor islanders. His family was originally from St. Kilda ; his grand- 

 father was catechist of the island, and the present man bought it a few years ago for 

 £1400. The people pay their rent in kind. Each family contributes seven stone of 

 feathers, valued at five shillings a stone ; these are procured from the fulmar, gannet 

 and puffin. It requires the feathers of eighty fulmars to make a stone, the same num- 

 ber of gannets and eight huudred puffins. Each family has also to contribute twenty 

 pecks of barley (bear), at a shilling a peck ; and from most of the families the propri- 

 etor receives rent, for a cow's grass seven shillings, for a sheep's grass one shilling, 

 and for a lamb's grass sixpence per annum. The average number of sheep possessed 

 by each family is eight : some few have two cows. The price of a full-grown sheep is 

 five shillings, of a lamb ninepence. In addition to exporting wool and feathers, the 

 people send out annually thirty-two barrels of bird-oil, principally obtained from the 

 fulmar, which sells at £3 the barrel. The average number in each family is four: 

 one man, and one only, has five children. The houses are twenty-eight in number, of 

 which twenty-one have land attached to them, and are inhabited by married men and 

 widowers. The remaining seven are occupied by old maids and widows. Fishing is 

 entirely neglected, from the extreme danger of the rocks ; and they only possess two 

 boats, which they use to go to Borrera about once a month, to Soa, an island not more 

 than half a mile from St. Kilda, and Dun, which is only separated from the main 

 island by a chasm in the rock. St. Kilda is the only inhabited island of the four. 

 And now, having I fear wearied your readers with this long description of the inhabi- 

 tants of St. Kilda, whom it is impossible for any one to visit without feeling deeply 

 interested, I will proceed to give you an account of our ornithological researches in 

 this isolated spot. 



On the first morning, attended by the whole male population of the island, we as- 

 cended the cliff from the village to its north-eastern side, their chief preserve of the 

 fulmar, which we saw in countless thousands, some upon their single white egg, others 

 gliding through the air, with their graceful noiseless flight within a few feet of us. 

 The islanders would only take one bird and its egg from this locality, for fear of dis- 

 turbing their great breeding-place, but promised us a larger supply from Borrera the 

 following day. It is the young fulmar which is the valuable product of the island ; 

 its feathers are more prized, its flesh more tender, and the oil extracted from it more 

 pure and in greater abundance than from the old birds. We procured two or three 

 remarkable nuts, taken from the crops of the young fulmars, apparently Brazilian. 

 We could only account for their being found in such an unlikely quarter, by the birds 

 having settled on the wrecks of some vessels sailing from South America. I shall bo 



