THE IBIS. 
NEW SERIES. 
No. V. JANUARY 1866. 
I.— On the Solan Goose, or Gannet (Sula bassana, Linn.). By 
Robert O. Cunningham, M.l). 
(Plate I.) 
The earliest reference to this well-known bird with which I 
am acquainted, is to be found in the celebrated Anglo-Saxon 
Chronicle, a work generally acknowledged to have been the 
result of the labours of a number of successive hands, and re¬ 
counting the events which occurred from CsesaFs invasion to 
shortly after the middle of the twelfth century. In the account 
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of the events recorded as having taken place a.d. 975, there 
occurs the following passage :— 
Anb pa peajvS 
eac abpaepeb 
beop-mob haslet 
Oj-lac op eap.de. 
opep ySa-'gepealc. 
opep ganotep bee's. 
Then too was driven 
Oslac beloved 
an exile far 
from his native land 
over the rolling waves,— 
over the ganet-bath.* 
“ Solendse ” are also briefly mentioned by the father of Scottish 
history, John de Fordun, in the sixth chapter of the first book 
of his ‘ Scotichronicon * j*j as building in great numbers on the 
* Edition by the Rev. J. Ingram, B.D. London, 1823. 
t Johannis de Fordun Scotichronicon, cum Supplementis ac Con- 
tinuatione Walteri Boweri, Insulae Sanctae Columbae Abbatis: E Codici- 
bus MSS. editum. Edinburgi, 1747. 
N. S.-VOL. II. 
B 
