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sea-weed for building their nests. They were formed entirely of this material, as we ascertained from examining the habitations of the two colonies which have been obliged to nidify on the top of the rock, all the shelves and ledges on the face being forestalled. They were so tame at these two places as often to refuse to move until kicked off the nest. They then stood chattering with open bill, and if you attempted to touch them would inflict a severe bite. Their threatening attitudes were ludicrously pompous.

One year the whole west side of the rock was depopulated, from fishermen and others having shot them, when they wandered up the firth in August, after an unusually long-continued shoal of herrings. The manner of the soland's attack upon these shoals is very curious. From a height of fifty or sixty feet, he comes down into the deep head foremost, with the solidity of a stone. I have watched a dozen follow each other in regular succession-keeping as true time as the ticking of a clock. When they emerge, they don't repeat the operation for some time, and fly out of the water with a lazy lagging flap.

Gentlemen often practise rifle-shooting at the geese. The site of some of their exploits was pointed out. One inviting snip of rock juts out upon a line with the walls of the fortress, where the riflemen take their station. They have seldom long to wait ere a gannet settles upon this point. It was called "Baird's shot," from some steadyhanded Baird having frequently perforated his goose. Upon looking steadily at the distance, I could not reckon it more than seventy or eighty yards. Taking everything

into consideration, the cool post of the shooter, and the fair position of his mark, a first-rate rifleman ought seldom to miss.

The only small birds I saw on the Bass were a couple of rock pipits, feeding among the withered sea-ware close to the landing bay. Their nest no doubt was near, and they had chosen a place to build it upon, which did not belie their name. Those inheritors of dilapidation and decay, the jackdaws, sum up the zoology I noticed on the Bass Rock. The old rampart walls and chapel had most likely tempted them over the sea from Tantallan Castle.

Having satisfied my curiosity, and procured all the specimens I wanted, we hoisted our sail and steered for Canty Bay. Numbers of the common gull were flitting about us on our passage, although I saw none on the

Bass.

When stripping the soland of his best fly feathers, old Jack remarked that the wing-pinions were excellent for writing-quills. He had often commissions from the village teachers in the neighbourhood for a supply. There was a good deal of oil about them, which the schoolmasters extract by cutting off the end of the quills and soaking them in warm water. I took out my penknife and made one or two into toothpicks; upon which Jack assured me that I would find them "far praeferable to a prin” (pin).

There can scarcely be a more inviting resting-place than Canty Bay; a cheerful sunny beach of smoothest sand, enclosed by rising hillocks covered with wild flowers; the bold ocean-waves rolling before, and the bolder ocean-rock

in full view. I now joined our party there, who had been busily giving books, &c., among the few cottages which lie in one sheltered corner. A poor man, whom reason had left, lay basking on the grass with a number of children. playing all round him. He seemed gentle and kind to them, though no others dared to interfere. Sorrow had left its deepest traces on his poor old mother's face. Suffering of many kinds met our eyes; and we were painfully impressed with the contrast between the outer forms of nature and these poor wrecks of human kind.

ON EAGLES

FEW sportsmen, who have been much in the wilds of Scotland, have not occasionally seen an eagle; but, except at the hatching season, it is extremely difficult to get a shot at one. Even then it is no easy task, for the nest is often in the face of some precipice which few dare to scale.

The golden-eagle is not nearly so great a foe to the farmer as to the sportsman; for although a pair, having young ones, will occasionally pounce upon very young and unprotected lambs, and continue their depredations until scared away, their more usual prey consists of hares, blackgame, and grouse—a fact sufficiently proved by the feathers and bones found in their eyries. A pair used to build every year in Balquhidder, another in Glen Ogle, and a third in Glenartney. The shepherds seldom molested the old ones; but by means of ladders, at considerable risk, took the young and sold them. One of these brought to Callander, not long ago, when scarcely full-fledged, would seize a live cat thrown to it for food, and, bearing it away with the

greatest ease, tear it to pieces, the cat unable to offer any resistance, and uttering the most horrid yells. From the havoc they made among the game, especially when they had young, the keepers in the neighbourhood have been very diligent of late years in searching out the eyries, and trapping the old birds; so that now, in this part of Perthshire, there is not one for three nests that there were formerly.

I recollect, some time ago, an eyrie in Glen-Luss, where a pair hatched yearly; but since the female was shot, no others have frequented the place. The shooting of this eagle was a service of great danger, and the man who undertook it a most hardy and determined fellow. The cliff was nearly perpendicular, and the only way of access was over the top, where a single false step would have sent him headlong into the gulf below. After creeping down a considerable way, he saw the eagle sitting on her eggs, a long shot off; but his gun was loaded with swanshot, so, taking a deliberate aim, he fired; she gave one shrill scream, extended her wings, and died on her nest. His greatest difficulty now was, how to avail himself of his He was not, however, the man to be balked; so, at the most imminent risk, he managed to get to the eyrie, tumbled the eagle over the cliff, and pocketed the two eggs. They were set under a hen, but did not hatch. I afterwards broke one of the shells, and was quite astonished at its thickness.

success.

A fair shot may sometimes be got at the male when there are young ones in the nest, as he will often stoop

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