388 THE ZOCOLOGIST. 
here.* It might have been well alsoif the gentleman who con- 
fessed so much had confessed to all, and that his whole essay to 
‘Chambers’s Journal’ was simply Captain Basil Hall’s admir- 
able account of that distant rock (which ‘‘ was the best account 
written of Rockall’), or if not the same, not sufficiently dis- 
cuised, and at the same time betrayed by his allusion to Little 
Auks nesting upon it. This, had such a phenomenon been in 
existence, would have thrown even the vast isolation of the St. 
Kilda colony of Fulmar Petrels far into the shade. And this 
brings us back again to St. Kilda, about which I desire to say 
just a few words here. 
I may say at once I have utterly failed, after much searching 
vainly, to carry any history of the Fulmar in St. Kilda further 
back than Martin Martin’s writing in 1708, i.e. some two 
hundred and fifty years. Behind and beyond that even tradition 
fails to provide a clue. 
No writer that I have access to mentions the Fulmar as a 
native of St. Kilda prior to Martin’s writing. Linnzus gives no 
sign of his knowledge of the colony, his statement regarding its 
general status simply being ‘‘ intra tropicum arcticum.”’t I find 
nothing in Aldrovandus nor Ray, and I have failed to find any 
quotations from these writers or Gesner which indicate its 
presence there, except Brisson, ‘a reference to which Linneus 
gives.{ 
Careful consideration of the Gaelic name of the bird and 
correspondence with authorities on Celtic languages force me 
to the conclusion that none other exists except the simple 
“* Fulmair,” as adopted from the English name, Fulmar. To 
arrive at this definite result has cost a lot of trouble: done, it 
may save such again. 
We must, therefore, be content to believe the oldest past of the 
colonizing of St. Kilda by Fulmars is beyond our ken, and turn 
to its comparatively more recent existence as a British bird.$ 
* ‘Annals of Scottish Natural History,’ 1892, p. 197. 
+ ‘ Systema Nature,’ 12th edit. p. 213, 1766. (We do not quote the 
10th edit.) 
{ Quotes Brisson’s account of a specimen sent to Paris. 
§ Which portion of this paper, as already stated, has been contributed to 
the pages of the ‘ Scottish Naturalist,’ commencing in May, 1912. 
(To be continued.) 
