THE GANNET. 
263 
sive days, a dark cloud was seen rising from its apex, like smoke 
from a volcano, which the configuration of the island so strongly 
resembles. 
When in the vicinity in September 1843, I was told that the 
gentleman who had “ the shooting ” over the property about Bal- 
lantrae that season, went to Ailsa and cruelly slaughtered, in one 
forenoon with two guns, upwards of a hundred gannets, nearly all 
old birds. He first killed one at about a hundred yards from the 
island, and let it lie on the water to attract others to the spot, 
which it unfortunately did, until the number mentioned was killed. 
Bad as the destruction of gannets narrated by Audubon (vol. iv. 
p. 224) is, this is still worse, the American slayers having an ob- 
ject in it, though making a very trivial use of the birds. They 
killed them for the sake of the flesh of the breast, as bait for 
cod-fish. 
Off the north of Scotland, the gannet is said to breed on the 
island of Souliskerry, as it is well known to do off the east coast, 
at the Bass Bock, Frith of Forth. Its only breeding-place* on 
the English coast is Lundy Island, in the Bristol Channel, and 
but a single locality on the coast of Ireland is thus honoured : 
this is one of the Skellig islands on the coast of Kerry. Smith, 
in his history of that county, written a century ago, when 
describing the “ second or middle Skellig ” island, observes — 
“'’Tis remarkable that the gannet nestles nowhere else on the 
south coast of Ireland, and though multitudes of them are daily 
seen on all parts of our coast upon the wing, and in the sea, yet 
they were never known to alight on any other land or rock here- 
abouts, except on this island.” It is added, “ I have been in- 
formed that there is another rock on the north coast of Ireland 
where they alight and breed in the same manner, and nowhere 
else in the kingdom.” I am unable to conjecture what rock is 
* Mr. Macgillivray adds “ Ronay ” to the preceding Scottish localities, but simply 
names the island (‘Manual Brit. Birds, 5 vol. ii. p. 225). Gannets are not mentioned 
in any description of North, East, or West Ilona that I have read, as frequenting 
any of those islands. M'Culloch, describing Sulisker or Barra and North Rona in 
the same chapter, mentions these birds at the former island only (‘Western Isles, 5 
&c., vol. i. p. 205). 
