The Gannet or Soland-goose (_Sula Bassana_) haunts the Bass Island, a high steep rock in the Frith of Forth, whose black precipices are painted with dazzling stripes of white _guano_, the product of the inconceivable number of birds which settle upon the weather-beaten ledges. The gannets incubate in the turf of the slopes above, and you may sit down by them and their great downy young while their mates hover over you with discordant screams and almost touch you with their outspread pinions. There is but one landing-place, and this sole entrance to the natural fastness is closed by a barred gate, proclaiming that man has taken possession of the rock. Some years ago it was let at an annual rent of thirty-five pounds. The eggs are not collected, and no old bird is allowed to be shot, under a penalty of five pounds; only the young birds are persecuted. The chase begins on the 1st of August. They are taken with the hand or knocked on the head with sticks, and sent to the Edinburgh market, where they fetch about half a crown a piece. The gannet breeds also on Lundy Island, in the Severn, on Ailsa, on the coast of Ayrshire, on the island of St. Kilda, and hardly anywhere else in Europe. As it must let itself fall before taking wing, it requires a steep and precipitous breeding-station. Its mode of fishing is particularly graceful. Rapidly skimming the surface of the sea, as soon as it spies a fish swimming below, it rises perpendicularly over the spot, and then, suddenly folding its wings, drops head-foremost on its prey swifter than an arrow, and with almost unerring aim. The prevalent colour of the full-plumaged bird is white, the tips of its wings only being black, and some black lines about the face, resembling eyebrows or spectacles. The pale yellow eyes are encircled with a naked skin of fine blue, the head and neck are buff colour, the legs black, and greenish on the fore part. The plumage of the young bird is very different, being blackish, dotted irregularly with small white specks.