15 
Dr. R. 0. Cunningham on the Solan Goose. 
Holland and France, on the coasts of Spain and Portugal, in 
the Mediterranean, and off Madeira. Further south than this 
it seems to give place to the Sula melanura *. As in Europe, so 
in America, the breeding-stations of the Gannet are but few in 
number, being restricted, in so far as I am aware, to an island 
or islands in the Bay of Fundy, and to four rocks in the Gulf of 
St. Lawrence, viz. the Great Bird or Gannet Rock, the Little or 
North Bird Rock, Perce Rock near Gaspe, and Gannet Rock near 
Mingan. It is of common occurrence on the shores of the 
United States, and on the north-west coast of the continent; 
and it is also met with in Greenland, though very rarely, ac¬ 
cording to Fabricius, who states that it does not breed there. 
In endeavouring to give an outline of what is now known of 
the habits of the Solan Goose, it will be convenient to treat of 
it as separately noticed in its principal European and American 
localities ; and I shall begin with some remarks on it as 
seen at the earliest-known habitat of the bird, the Bass Rock, 
where I have had an opportunity of personal observation. The 
form and appearance of this celebrated island have been so often 
and so elaborately described that a very few words will suffice to 
say all that is necessary on the subject. It is about two miles 
distant from the southern shore of the Firth of Forth, and three 
from the venerable town of North Berwick, rises to the height 
of 420 feet above the level of the sea, and is formed of a huge 
mass of trap of a character intermediate between greenstone and 
clinkstone. Its sides rise bold and perpendicular, and on the 
east and west may be seen the opposite openings of a cavern 
30 feet high and 170 feet long, which owes its existence to the 
hollowing agency of the sea. Its “ sloping acclivity,” to employ 
the words of the late Hugh Miller, “ consists of three great steps, 
or terraces, with steep belts of precipice rising between ; ” of 
these “the lowest is occupied by the fortress, and furnishes, 
where it sinks slopingly towards the sea on the south-east, the 
two landing-places of the island.” The middle, situated exactly 
* The poet Robert Browning furnishes us with rather a curious illus¬ 
tration of a mistake arising from ignorance of the habits and distribution 
of the bird; for in Part III. of ‘ Paracelsus ’ we find Festus referring to 
his son “ Aureole’s glee when some stray Gannet builds amid the birch- 
trees by the lake” of Geneva ! 
