scapulars, face and tail, shoots out ; the wing feathers develope 
themselves,* and the black bird waddles forth, an unwieldy 
mountain of fat. He has to try a little “ banting ” before he can 
fly, and then he takes himself away, for the old gannets do not like 
these “black sheep” at home, and I did not see one at the Bass, 
though I picked up a last year’s bird, dead and dried, in the 
intermediate state of plumage, t Young birds, old birds, nests, 
eggs, everything connected with them, give forth a terrific odour. 
The fishermen say, if the wind is strong, they can smell the old 
Bass and its fishy inhabitants miles away. But all this is changed 
in winter : then the wet and the spray wash the great rock down, 
which resumes its pristine tint of brown. In old days, ’the 
gannets used to breed on the grassy slope of the Bass, where their 
nests were very accessible ; but prying egg-dealers, persecuting 
* The white plumage begins to appear on the throat, breast, and belly, 
at the age of one year, as I found out from a specimen in the Zoological 
Gardens ; which, when I saw it, a few days after it was deposited, in 
September, 1870, had some down upon it. Change of plumage in captive 
birds may be delayed, but can hardly be accelerated, by confinement, so that 
it was a proper example to form an opinion upon. 
This seems the place to offer a remark or two on the Black-tailed gannets. 
Clusius speaks of a black-tailed gannet from Faeroe, and Dr. Cunningham 
remarks in the Ibis (1S66, p. 5) that the statement reminds one of the 
South African Sul a melanura ; and adds, that it was probably only an 
indication of youth. [I believe the South African bird’s real name is not 
Sula melanura, Tern., but S. capensis, Licht.] Clusius’ is not the only 
instance of our northern species assuming the distinguishing colours of the 
southern, for Gould in his Birds of Europe, figures a gannet of Temminck’s 
which came from Iceland ; and Mr. Gray in his appendix alludes to examples 
which have been observed at St. Kilda (B. of Scot.), and Mr. Macgillivray 
to another which was killed on the Bass (B.B. v., 420), where, also, 
Mr. Gray informs me (in epist.) that he has seen examples, adding his 
conviction that the black tail is only the last trace of immaturity not yet 
effaced. Mr. Gray also tells me that he has examined gannets which were 
adult, excepting that they had one or two black feathers in their tails, and I 
remember seeing one so marked at Hastings. We may hold it as settled 
that the black rectrices are the last remnants of a youthful garb which the 
gannet throws off, as they are also nearly the first to come ; and that in our 
northern seas, the South African Sula capensis with a black tail has never 
occurred. 
t I am told that a few young birds make their appearance abou the 
12th of May. 
