Letters of Rusticns. 2449 



these, the cliff-man has to keep an incessant look-out, and to bob his head this way 

 and that, to escape a broken sconce. 



" The guillemot, or ' willock,' as it is here called, sits with its egg under its wing, 

 or pressed to one side of its breast, and always on the same side, so that a mark on 

 the breast of the bird plainly shows the situation of the egg whilst she is sitting. Af- 

 ter the day when the egg is laid, it is very rarely left, and it is only for this one day 

 that the collectors have much chance of getting it. They tell you that when the bird 

 has once begun sitting, she will never suffer herself to be robbed ; but that when all 

 chance of saving the egg is gone, she rolls it off the ledge and flies away. This story 

 is partly true, but there is some doubt whether she acts on the true dog-in-the-manger 

 system of smashing her egg because no one else shall have it : its position is so ticklish, 

 that when the bird is forced to take flight to avoid capture, she may very easily upset 

 her charge and pitch it over the precipice, in the mere flurry attendant on the act of 

 self-preservation. 



" Man is not the only robber this poor bird has to fear: the gulls and ravens are 

 ever on the alert to secure her eggs. This is horrid unkind of neighbours, but per- 

 haps not inconsistent with our own practice. The gulls are for ever scanning the 

 face of the cliff, hoping to catch a glimpse of an unprotected egg. Directly a gull 

 has found one, he charges point blank at its small end, using his beak as a lance : the 

 huge egg, thus pierced, sticks on his beak, and he flies away as though he was carry- 

 ing a great pear in front of his head : in this way he sucks out all the goodness while 

 on the wing, and drops the shell when empty. These shells, with a great hole at one 

 end, may often be found upon the downs above, and naturalists profoundly assert that 

 stoats and weasels are the aggressors ; thus assigning to those lithesome quadrupeds 

 a marvellous extent of cliff-scaling capability. 



" The raven has no less taste for willock's eggs than the gull, but his manoeuvres 

 are somewhat different : he never pierces the egg, but seizes it suddenly and darts off 

 to the top of the cliff, amid the uproar of the colony. While on the look-out, he tra- 

 verses silently and slowly the face of the cliff, making little circles, and returning 

 again and again to the same hunting-ground ; but the moment he spies an unpro- 

 tected egg, he darts in, seizes it, — I suppose with his feet, — and makes off like an 

 arrow to the summit, there to enjoy his meal at leisure. You may mark him down, 

 and then by vociferous shouting and running to the place, make him leave his booty, 

 which is always sound and whole. 



" The peregrine falcon has had her eyrie here from time immemorial ; and these 

 noble birds are often to be seen soaring about the cliff, the terror of jackdaws, whose 

 young at this season constitute their favourite prey, or perhaps the favourite food of 

 their own young. The fishermen told me that this falcon always breeds here, and 

 that it is constantly following the kestrels, which abound all along the cliff, as if to 

 drive them away from his territory. 



" After having satisfied our curiosity here, we returned to our boat, and crossing 

 Alum Bay we again passed through the Needles, and pulled in for the beach at Sun 

 Corner, where the corvorants had fallen. Three were quite dead, the fourth had got 

 into the water and was swimming about in style. We chased him more than an 

 hour, firing at him about forty times, but to no purpose, as he dived the instant the 

 trigger was pulled : at last we very reluctantly gave up the pursuit as hopeless, the 

 wind having freshened, and made the swell rather too heavy for an open boat; the 

 tide, too, was quite out, and the rocky bottom occasionally peeped up all round us in 



