Dr. R. 0. Cunningham on the Solan Goose. 9 
fisher's throat, and pulls out the fish with its bill as with a pincer, 
and that with a very great noise, which I had occasion frequently 
to observe. They continue to pluck grass for their nests from 
their coming in March till the young fowl is ready to fly in 
August or September, according as the inhabitants take or leave 
the first or second eggs. It's remarkable of them that they 
never pluck grass but on a windy day, the reason of which I 
enquired of the inhabitants, who said that a windy day is the 
Solan Goose's vacation from fishing, and they bestow it upon this 
employment, which proves fatal to many of them, for after their 
fatigue they often fall asleep, and the inhabitants laying hold on 
this opportunity are ready at hand to knock them on the head. 
Their food is herring, mackrels, and syes; English hooks are 
often found in the stomachs both of young and old Solan Geese, 
though there be none of this kind used nearer than the Isles, 
twenty leagues distant; the fish pulling away the hooks in those 
isles go to St. Kilda, or are carried by the old geese thither ; 
whether of the two the reader is at liberty to judge. 
“ The Solan Geese are always the surest sign of herrings, for 
wherever the one is seen the other is always not far off. There 
is a tribe of barren Solan Geese which have no nests and sit on 
the bare rocks; these are not the young fowls of an year old, 
whose dark colour would soon distinguish them, but old ones, 
in all things like the rest; these have a province, as it were, 
allotted to them, and are in a separated state from the others, 
having a rock two hundred paces distant from all other, neither 
do they meddle with or approach to those hatching, or any other 
fowls. They sympathize and fish together: this being told me 
by the inhabitants, was afterwards confirmed to me several times 
by my own observation. 
“ The Solan Geese have always some of their number that 
keep centinel in the night-time, and if they are surprised, as it 
often happens, all that flock are taken one after another; but if 
the centinel be awake at the approach of the creeping fowlers, and 
hear a noise, it cries softly, Gi'og, Grog , at which the flock move 
not; but if this centinel see or hear the fowler approaching, he 
cries quickly, Bir, Bir, which would seem to import danger, since 
immediately after all the tribe take wing, leaving the fowler empty 
