230 
ALCIDiE. 
of the shag, jackdaw, and raven ; starlings, though building in 
great numbers amid the deserted tenements of man on the island, 
are not named as frequenting the cliffs for that purpose. The 
birds seen here, and not at Blamborough Head, were the greater 
and lesser black-backed gulls and the sea-eagle !* Although it is 
possible that all the birds frequenting those localities may not 
have come under the notice of the respective authors, yet it is a 
striking and interesting circumstance that, at Horn Head, and 
the adjacent range of cliffs, every species named as breeding about 
the Yorkshire and Sutherlandshire haunts is found, and in addi- 
tion to them nine others, namely, the black guillemot, the herring 
and common gull — the oyster- catcher — the house-martin, grey 
crow, chough, buzzard, and kestrel. 
The birds now snared, or “ dulled,” as it is called at Horn 
Head, for the sake of their feathers, are puffins, razorbills, guil- 
lemots, and kittiwakes ; — all the other species of Larus are 
too wary to be thus gulled. In less than two hours my informant 
has snared seventeen dozen, or above two hundred birds, and 
thirty-six dozen were known by a gentleman of my acquaintance 
to be taken within a similar time by two men : many years ago 
these feathers produced \2>d. per lb., but now (1832) they bring 
only §\d. Birds breeding in caves here are sometimes caught in 
nets drawn across their entrances. They are alarmed on their nests 
or roosting-places by loud shouting or the firing of guns within the 
cave, and, when endeavouring to make their exit, are captured. On 
particular inquiry of bird-catchers who are natives of the Horn, I 
was told that from four to six persons have lost their lives by this 
dangerous occupation within the preceding twenty years. When, 
in June 1834, at a breeding station of rock-birds on the largest 
of the South Islands of Arran, off Galway Bay, similar to the 
Horn, we learned that birds are in like manner snared for the sake 
of their feathers, and that a man assisted by a boy had thus taken 
three hundred razorbills in one night. Willughby, nearly two cen- 
turies ago, with reference to the Isle of Man, remarked — the Manks- 
* { Tour in Sutherland/ vol. i. p. 100. 
