sea-birds' eggs. 
43 
a corvorant to the bottom ; so there were four, as we sup- 
posed, quietly waiting our return. Emboldened by this 
success, we proceeded more than a mile along the top of 
the cliff, continually peeping over. We discovered two 
nests of a gull (perhaps the herring -gull), each with three 
eggs, of an olive-brown colour, with darker spots : the 
nests are made of dried grass and fern. The fishermen 
told us that these gulls will lay three eggs again, if the 
first three are taken, and three more when the second 
three are taken, but no more than this, nine being the 
whole stock for one year. But the greatest curiosity we 
observed was the nestless and solitary egg of the guille- 
mot, balanced, as if by a geometrician, on the bare rock, 
and looking as though the least puff of wind would blow it 
off its station into the sea.* We learned from the fisher- 
men, and some boys of the neighbourhood, that the puffins 
never expose their eggs, like the corvorants, razor-bills, 
guillemots and gulls, but lay them at the end of long 
holes, which they hollow out of the softer parts of the rock. 
We bought a few of these eggs to bring home ; they were 
dirty white, with darker spots. 
Along the circuitous edge of this cliff the egg-collectors 
plant the iron crow-bars for attaching the ropes by means 
of which they descend. Two ropes are commonly used, 
one goes round the body, and the other is held in the 
* " The rock-climbevs assure you that the guillemot, when undisturbed, 
never lays more than one egg; but that, if it be taken away, she will lay ano- 
ther ; and, if she be plundered of that, she will then produce a third ; and so 
on. If you dissect a guillemot, you will find a knot of eggs within her. The 
rock-climbers affirm that the bird can retain these eggs, or produce them, ac- 
cording to circumstances. Thus, if she be allowed to hatch her first egg, she lays 
no more for the season ; if that egg be lost or taken away, another is laid to sup- 
ply its place." — Waterton's ''Essays on Natural History^'' \st Series, 158. — E. N. 
