492 
BIRD-LIFE. 
avoid this, and reaches in safety those ledges where he 
wishes to collect his booty. Safely landed, he unfastens 
the rope, and carefully lays the end under a stone 
until it is next wanted; he then sets to work with 
hands and net, and catches as many birds as he can, 
wrings their necks, and throws them into the sea, where 
the people in the boats pick them up : he then ties on the 
rope afresh, and makes another start. The fowler often 
comes to places where the upper portion of the rock 
overhangs, which would allow him to pass the nesting- 
place in his descent, were he not able, by a tremendous 
effort of strength, to reach the desired spot: thus he sets 
himself swinging, until the oscillations become long 
enough to swing him under the ledge on to the breeding- 
place ; this he will do under great difficulties, getting- 
over projections of this sort, and treading places which lie 
as much as fifty feet from the perpendicular line at which 
he was lowered. This mode of overcoming the appa¬ 
rently impossible, is, however, dangerous in the extreme : 
even the greatest care does not always prevent the rope 
breaking, or a piece of rock may fall from above and dash 
the unfortunate fowler to pieces; an unusual impetus in 
the swinging to and fro may smash him against the 
rocky wall;—in short, death threatens him at every 
step.” 
Such bird-catching as the above I look upon as a 
crime, not towards the birds, but towards man. Birds 
are outraged only by the fowler in those countries, who vies 
with idle boys in useless destruction of life. I know two 
kinds of fowling, which every right-thinking and reason¬ 
able man cannot look upon as otherwise than justifiable : 
these are the capture, at the proper season , of the larger 
birds for the table, and the smaller ones for the cage. 
