THE SOLAN GOOSE. 
203 
goose, — the Fou de Bassan, as French naturalists call it, — though, to 
find its best-known habitat, we must carry the reader away to the 
isolated mass of trap rock, ofi" the east coast of Scotland, which seems 
to guard the broad estuary of the Forth. The Bass Rock is not with- 
out a history of its own ; while its romantic aspect has frequently 
been reproduced on the canvas of our marine painters. Its declivities, 
rugged, abrupt, almost perpendicular, are the home of myriads of solan 
geese ; so that the boatman, if, in passing near it, he blow a horn or 
fire a shot, finds the air suddenly astir with a tumult of wings. Of 
about the same size as the wild goose, he wears a coat of gray-white 
plumage, and has a long robust bill, terminating in a point, with 
mandibles dentilated at the margin. His wings are vigorous, and wide 
of sweep. As he is exclusively a fish-eater, his flesh is by no means 
desirable eating. He nests in the holes and fissures of the rock, and 
lays but a single egg. According to our naturalists, he is a silly bird, 
with physical faculties greatly in excess of his intelligence. Toussenel 
describes him as one of Nature's victims; as the serf of the sea, 
the ocean-boor, a coward, without heart to defend his rights, offering 
his back to the oppressor instead of his beak. All his "industrial 
power," all his " means of action " are, so to speak, null and void. 
He will labour for others to the end of the ages. 
It would be a mistake, however, to suppose that the solan or 
soland goose — tlie name is corrupted from the Latin sula, and a 
trace of it occurs in Suliskerry, " the gannet rock," St. Kilda — 
is confined to the Bass Rock. He frequents all insular rocks, or 
rocky islets, in the Northern waters ; voyaging to warmer regions 
at the approach of winter. The Cornish fisherman is often apprised 
of the advent of a pilchard-shoal by the appearance of flights of 
these birds. They abound on the cliffs of St. Kilda and Lundy 
Island, where every ledge is covered with the rude masses of sea- 
weed and marine grass which form their nests. To the same genus, 
that of the Gannet, belongs, we may add, the " booby " of the Southern 
Seas. 
ARCTIC SEA-BIRDS. 
Dr. Hayes, describing the bleak Arctic scenery of Smith 
