MANX SHEARWATER 263 
added, and we fail to get anything that looks like an 
account by a person who had visited its breeding place and 
observed the birds. Bishop Wilson says that young were 
ready to fly about the 15th August; that they were then 
‘hunted, and great numbers, few years less than four 
thousand or five thousand, taken. They were, he adds, 
almost one lump of fat. ‘They who will be at the expense 
of wine, spice, and other ingredients, to pickle them, make 
them very grateful to many palates, and send them abroad ; 
but the greatest parts are consumed at home, coming at a 
very proper time for the husbandman in harvest,’ ’ 
_In the account of ‘The profits of the Calve Island this 
year’ (1708) is included ‘the Puffins of ye s* Isle this year 
being 2618 birds at 1d., 13: 05: 06’ (Manx Note-Book, No. 8, 
p. 190). John Quayle, C.R., in his formerly quoted letter 
to his brother-in-law, James Moore (1776), says: ‘The 
other day I sent you a Kegg of Puffins. . . . I hope ere 
this comes to hand that you have received and tried the 
Puffins.’ 
Pennant (1776) Brit. Zool., ii. p. 551, tells us: ‘These 
birds are found in the Calf of Man; and as Mr. Ray 
supposes in the Scilly isles; they resort to the former in 
February ; take a short possession of the rabbit burrows, 
and then disappear till April; they lay one egg, white and 
blunt at each end, and the young are fit to be taken the 
beginning of August ; when great numbers are killed by the 
person who farms the isle; they are salted and barrelled, 
and when they are boiled are eaten with potatoes. During 
the day they keep at sea fishing; and towards evening 
return to their young; whom they feed, by discharging the 
contents of their stomachs into their mouths; which by 
1 Mr, W. A. Stevenson tells me that the Puffins of the Calf are said to have 
been regularly tithed for the benefit of the Church, and a certain rock at the 
Sound, where the division was made, is still pointed out. 
