537 
will throw off colonies every year, and decrease the parent stock. 
Most of the guillemots, etc., are able to take care of themselves 
by the 1 st of August ; but the close time ends a good fortnight too 
soon for the gannets, some of which have still young which cannot 
provide for themselves. Though wild enough in all conscience 
in the winter, they arc sure to bo tame so long as they are held by 
affection’s ties, and easy to murder. Those who shoot them in the 
beginning of August, flying with fish in their mouths to the Bass, 
have the satisfaction of knowing that they havo made a young one 
to perish of hunger, and there have been brutes, calling themselves 
men, who to gratify a spito against the lessoo, have taken this 
wicked revenge. He told me himself, that ho had seen the sea 
strewn with dead gannets, and that they did not even take the 
trouble to lift them when they had shot them. 
It is the gannets’ misfortune that they take lunger than other 
birds in the task of incubating, and they pay a dear penalty for it. 
I have now finished with the bird for which the Bass Bock is 
famous, but a few other species require notice. My boatman 
stated, that ho believed the black guillemot — and he knows it 
well — breeds in very small numbers. I was not lucky enough to 
see one. I saw a good many parties of common guillemots, and 
pairs of puffins. I saw only one razorbill, and I found them 
equally scarce at the Feme Islands, and Flamborough Head. 
Speaking of puffins, they are said to breed in the old buildings, 
the dungeon, and the ancient fortalice. Perhaps the rabbits have 
dispossessed them of their burrows on the grass. 
Of land birds, pipits are common ; the wheatear and the wagtail 
are also there ; and I dare say the prisoners of old might sometimes 
have heard the blackbird pouring out a lively ditty. What gave 
my boatmen the greatest satisfaction to see, was a beautiful pair of 
peregrines on the east cliff, for one having been shot a short time 
ago,* they feared, not knowing the habits of the bird, that the 
other might not find a mate, in which case they would have lost a 
good price, which they always make of the nestlings. They looked 
with much less pleasure on a large flock of jackdaws. A few' 
years ago an attempt was made to destroy these egg-sucking 
thieves by eggs seasoned with strychnine, and slices of bread 
* I saw this, a fine female, at Mr. Small’s, birdstuffer, Edinburgh. 
