488 
BIRD-LIFE. 
yearly reared, this sport is pursued year after year. 
The inhabitants of these islands mark the breeding- 
places chosen by the sea-fowl, from which they take 
hundreds of thousands of eggs and young, without, 
however, apparently diminishing their numbers to any 
appreciable extent. 
The trade of the rock-fowler is a terrible one,—a calling 
requiring manhood, agility, experience, presence of mind, 
—and with all this, good fortune,—such as scarcely 
any other occupation would demand. In this pursuit 
death stares the fowler in the face in a thousand different 
shapes; there is peril in every step. It is only those 
who have been used to look danger in the face from their 
youth up, and are accustomed to risk their lives for a 
trifle, who can become good rock-fowlers. In certain 
families the dread calling is inherited from father to son: 
these followers of the craft are looked up to by the other 
inhabitants, for in those islands the profession of fowler is 
regarded as an honourable employment, a high art, worthy 
of the best men. This celebrity and renown is, however, 
dearly bought, for, as in the family of the chamois hunter, 
it is but seldom that any male member dies in his bed; 
and one rarely meets with a rock-fowler who is a hale and 
sound old man. Death meets them suddenly in the 
middle of an active pursuit, or accident cripples them for 
life. Not a year passes which does not claim one or more 
victims from their guild, none that a cripple is not made 
in following this terrible trade. Before each excursion 
the pious fowler utters a silent prayer, and commits him¬ 
self to the hands of his Maker,—as does the miner before 
descending into the mighty depths of the earth. Before 
every trip the fowler takes leave of his family, as though 
they were never to meet again. And yet, with all this, 
