AND BLACK-BILLED AUK. 
25 
neighbours. The practice encourages irregular, rapacious, 
and dangerous habits, for fatal accidents are not unfre- 
quently occurring to the fowlers : and checking its excess, 
would be repelling no romantic notions of liberty and at- 
tachment to country, associated with the chace, in minds 
alive to the refined pleasure of sublime scenery ; for it is 
not the love of the chace, but its supposed subserviency to 
their emolument or taste, that induces them to pursue it. 
It has been observed, that, around grazing islands, and 
situations where sea-birds were formerly numerous, fish 
were also very abundant ; and that the diminution of both 
keeps pace in some degree with each other, although fishing 
is not now more generally practised than before. Causes 
for this result it might not be difficult to assign. Besides, 
water-birds;, by scattering migratory fish, as the herring, 
tend to render them more stationary and permanent in 
countries through which they might merely pass. 
Many of these species, also, in defence of their nests, 
prevent the more powerful rapacious birds from approach- 
ing near them, and thus are indirectly the protectors of the 
flocks that pasture in their vicinity. 
Proprietors seem not sufficiently aware of these advan- 
tages, or of the inexpressible interest and ornament which 
the feathered inhabitants throw over the rocky scene. 
Edinburgh, ) 
March 24. 1823. j 
