ST. KILDA AND ITS BIRDS. 353 



ing on all available ledges of these cliffs. Before leaving 

 Stack an Armin, it is interesting to recall here the tradi- 

 tion which renders it . probable that it was on this spot 

 that the last British specimen of the Great Auk* was 

 captured. I took the story down from the lips of the 

 grandson of the man who assisted at the poor bird's 

 destruction.* Norman McKiimon, who speaks English 

 well, had often heard his grandfather (Lauchlan 

 McKiimon) relate the particulars of the occurrence, and 

 the account bears all the evidence of being substantially 

 accurate. Norman's grandfather was on Stack an Armin, 

 engaged with some other men in catching Gannets for the 

 sake of their feathers, &c, living at the time in one of the 

 little " houses," such as the men used to occupy on such 

 occasions. As the young Gannets were then fledged, it 

 would have been towards the end of August. When the 

 men were desirous of getting away, continuous bad weather 

 came on, which kept them prisoners on the Stack. One 

 day they saw a very strange bird at the back of the 

 " house," such as they had never seen before. It was 

 described as being about the size of a year-old lamb, with 

 a head like a Razor-bill and short wings, so that it could 

 not fly. The men caught the bird, tied a rope to its leg, 

 and kept it for two or three days. The extraordinary 

 appearance of the bird impressed the men so much, that 

 they thought it was a ghost, and looked upon it as the 

 cause of the bad weather which they were experiencing. 

 They therefore killed the poor bird, and threw it at the 

 back of the house, covering it with stones. It has ever 

 since gone by the name of the "Ghost bird." Norman's 



* I was not aware until my return from St. Kilda that Mr. Henry 

 Evans had published an account of this incident, derived from 

 personal investigation on the spot (vide Harvie-Brown and Buckley's 

 "Vertebrate Fauna of the Outer Hebrides"), but the result of an 

 independent enquiry may not be devoid of interest. 



