Birds. 2059 



happy when I come to London to show you one which was taken from the bird last 

 year. The view from the highest point of this cliff was magnificent. It was very 

 striking, looking northward, southward, eastward and westward, to see nothing but a 

 wide expanse of blue ocean (save the neighbouring rock of Borrera) covered for a few 

 miles by innumerable sea fowl. 



We proceeded in the afternoon to the isle of Dun, forming the western horn of 

 the bay of St. Kilda. Here the razor-bill, puffin, guillemot, black guillemot, oyster- 

 catcher, eider duck, fulmar, herring gull, and the greater and lesser black-backed, 

 gulls, were breeding in abundance ; but in addition to these we discovered the chief 

 object of our visit to St. Kilda. Not far from the top of the cliff were a colony of the 

 fork-tailed petrel, breeding, like the stormy petrel, under the stones and rock, about a 

 yard deep. We were first attracted to them by a low chirping noise, which from time 

 the females made while sitting upon their eggs. In one hole only did we find the 

 male and female together. The egg is considerably larger than that of the stormy 

 petrel, and resembles it in being surrounded at the larger end by a beautiful zone of 

 red freckles. They are nearly three weeks before the stormy petrel in depositing their 

 eggs ; and in the localities where we found the fork-tailed petrel there was not a sin- 

 gle stormy petrel. 



On the following day we divided, one party going to Soa, the chief breeding-place 

 of the shearwater, and the rest of us rowing over to Borrera, where the gannet 

 breeds in great abundance. This rock, with its smaller satellites, lies five miles north- 

 east of St. Kilda, and, excepting in a north wind and calm sea, is unapproachable 

 from St. Kilda. It is a mile and a half long by half a mile broad. We were fortu- 

 nate in our day, and after a two hours' row by fourteen men, in a very clumsy boat, 

 we arrived at one of the smaller stacks of rocks close to Borrera, entirely occupied by 

 kittiwakes and guillemots. By the aid of our glass, we distinctly made out two spe- 

 cimens of the ringed guillemot (Uria lacrymans), which the intelligence of the islanders 

 enabled us to obtain, one, sitting on its egg, taken by the noose in the manner I be- 

 fore described, a male bird, and proving the absurdity of the idea that the ringed 

 guillemot lays a white egg. The egg we took was of a bright green, covered with ir- 

 regular lines of brownish black. The bird itself differs very little from the common 

 guillemot, except in being a trifle smaller, and having the bill a little more slender. 

 We took an egg from the common guillemot, quite white, excepting two or three brown 

 spots ; and one I received from Hamborough this year was perfectly white. Brunnich's 

 or the thick-billed guillemot is found in Soa. The other party took one egg, which 

 does not at all differ from some varieties of the egg of the common guillemot ; it is 

 streaked, and not spotted or blotched, and of a bright green colour. Borrera is the 

 chief pasturage for their sheep, which are very wild. The wool is of a dun and gray 

 colour, and very fine. The mutton excellent, though of course not fat. The ascent 

 up Borrera was very difficult ; with a rope round our bodies we were taken in tow, and 

 without shoes, owing to the slippery state of the rocks, half carried half scrambling, 

 succeeded in mounting to a height of 700 feet, about midway to the summit. 

 We then proceeded to the top, the same height as Conaker, about 1400 feet above the 

 sea level, and to describe the view I should be gifted with the pen of a Scott or aCow- 

 per. If St. Kilda struck us with astonishment, what shall I say of Borrera ? It alone 

 amply repaid us for all our trouble, all our journies. Every step we took the view be- 

 came more splendid ; the two highest pinnacles appear to stretch up to the sky, both 

 of them quite perpendicular into the sea 1400 feet. The stacks about it look like dots 



