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C. AND H. CANDLER ON BIRD-LIFE OF SKELLIG ROCKS. 
III. 
NOTES ON THE BIRD-LIFE OF THE SKELLIG ROCKS. 
By Charles and Henry Candler. 
Read 24-th September, 1SS9. 
If a reference be made to a map of south-west Ireland, it will 
be seen that a considerable portion of the county of Kerry is 
comprised in the wild and mountainous peninsula, bounded by 
Dingle Bay on the north and the deep inlet known as the Kenmare 
River on the south. A lofty range of Old Red Sandstone hills 
runs parallel with the northern coast-line of this peninsula, and 
terminates seaward in a chain of islands, the most remote of which 
is the Great Skellig, lying eight and a half miles nearly due west 
of Bolus Head, the nearest point on the mainland. One mile to 
the north-east of this rock is the Little Skellig ; and about midway 
between the latter and the southern point of Puffin Island, the 
Lemon Rock, rising a few feet above the waves, shows the direction 
of the old mountain range. 
In the spring of the present year we visited the Skellig Islands, in 
the course of a fortnight’s ramble along the coast-line of Cork and 
Kerry ; and we have drawn up a few rough notes on the bird-life 
of the rocks, in the hope of interesting the members of a Society 
which has always given to ornithology a very prominent, if not 
a leading, place in its work. 
Early in the morning of the 25th of May we left the inn at 
Knight’s Town, walked westward four miles along the main road 
which runs through Yalentia Island, and crossed by the ferry to 
the poor and, at that time, fever-haunted hamlet of Port Magee on 
the Kerry mainland, our point of departure for the islands. We 
