628 
I. 
THE GANNET CITY. 
By J. II. Gurney, Jun., F.Z.S. 
Read May 28th, 1878. 
In the month of March, 1876 , I paid a visit to the great Gannet * 
City, called the Bass Bock, on the southern entrance of the Firth 
of Forth. I made visits at the same time to Flamborougli Head, 
and the Feme Islands, accounts of which have been published in 
Mr. Dawson Eowley’s ‘ Ornithological Miscellany,’ and in the 
‘Proceedings of the Natural History Society of Glasgow.’ I now 
wish to lay before the Norfolk and Norwich Naturalists’ Society 
an account of the birds which live on the Bass Bock in the 
summer; but to do justice to the old Bock, I must also he allowed 
to refer to the historical associations which connect it with the 
lives of the Scotch martyrs. 
On getting to the Drem station, which is the junction for 
North Berwick, a very high pyramidal hill, carpeted with green, is 
perceived, called North Berwick Law, this the tourist, unless 
forewarned, will mistake for the Bass, which is indeed a lower rock 
and further off. Arrived at the Bass itself, he will have no little 
difficulty, if there is a swell on, in effecting a landing, and this 
done, he cannot get any further unless he has come provided with 
the key of the castle wall. On the day of my visit the sea was all 
one glassy lake, not a breath of wind played upon its surface, no 
wavelets broke against our bows, scarce a ripple was seen, nature 
was stilled into repose; and before us huge and gloomy, there slept 
upon the waters a mass of homogeneous trap older than the 
Pyramids, taller than St. Paul’s, and mightier than the fierce 
elements, and that huge mass was the Bass. Far and near the 
puffins and guillemots could be seen like black dots upon the 
* It seems hardly necessary to premise, that Gannet Sula bassana (L.) 
and Solan Goose are names used indifferently for the same bird. 
