THE PUFFIN. 
231 
men “ take the birds [razorbills, guillemots, and puffins] them- 
selves when they are sitting upon their eggs, with snares fastened 
to the top of long poles, and so put about their necks” (p. 324). 
Mr. John M'Gillivray, in an excellent paper on the Birds, &c. 
of St. Kilda, published in the ‘ Edinburgh Philosophical Journal ’ 
for January 1842, mentions the puffin, by far the most abundant 
species of bird there, being captured in a similar manner, and 
that by such means “ as many as three hundred may be taken in 
the course of the day by an expert bird-catcher” (p. 67). He 
visited the island in July 1840. Mr. James Wilson, who did so 
in August 1841, gives a very full and interesting account of the 
island in his ‘ Yoyage Bound the Coast of Scotland and the 
Isles/ and mentions a more ingenious device for capturing puf- 
fins. He says — “ These birds are caught by stretching a piece 
of cord along the stony places where they chiefly congregate. To 
this cord are fastened, at intervals of a few inches, numerous hair 
nooses, and from time to time, when the countless puffins are 
paddling upon the surface, in go their little web feet, they get 
noosed round the ankle, and no sooner begin to flap and flutter 
than down rushes a ruthless widow woman, and twists their necks. 
Her dog had acted a useful part, not only in driving more distant, 
or otherwise inaccessible birds, from their roosting-places towards 
the nooses, but by catching them dexterously in its mouth.” The 
widow here alluded to lived chiefly on the puffin in its season 
here. 
The statement of the gamekeeper and others at Horn Head 
respecting the puffins 5 departure about the 12th of August, is, 
doubtless, correct in general terms. Only about half-a-dozen 
birds were observed on the sea between that headland and Tory 
Island on the 8th of August, 1845 ;* and on the 1st of that 
month in 1850, a few only came under the notice of a gen- 
tleman walking along the summit of the whole range of cliffs. t 
Many specimens of the razorbill have been procured in that 
* Mr. G. C, Hyndman. 
f Mr. R. Taylor. 
