Crass Il. GANNET CORVORANT. 
their whole dependance on the uncertain foot- 
ing of one person who holds the rope, by which 
they are suspended at the top of the precipice. 
The young birds are a favorite dish with the 
North Britons in general: during the season 
they are constantly brought from the Bass Isle 
to Edinburgh, sold at 20d. a-piece, are roasted, 
and served up a little before dinner as a whet. 
The Gannets are birds of passage. Their 
first appearance in those islands is in March ; 
their continuance there till dugust or Septem- 
ber, according as the inhabitants take or leave 
their first egg; but in general, the time of 
breeding, and that of their departure, seems to 
coincide with the arrival of the herring, and 
the migration of that fish (which is their prin- 
cipal food) out of those seas. It is probable 
that these birds attend the herring* and pilchard 
during their whole circuit round the British 
islands ; the appearance of the former being al- 
ways esteemed by the fishermen as a sure pre- 
sage of the approach of the latter. They migrate 
in quest of food as far south as the mouth of the 
Tagus, being frequently seen off Lisbon during 
the month of December, plunging for Sardine, 
* Buchanan, in his ‘‘ View of the Fishery of Great Britain,” 
conjectures that the Gannets which frequent the island of Sé. 
Kilda destroy annually one hundred and five millions of her- 
rings. Ep. 
uv 2 
291 
