A NATURALIST'S

WHITSUNTIDE

HOLIDAY.

BOUT a mile north-east of Penmon Point, Anglesea, there rises abruptly from the sea the little island of Priestholm, or S. Seiriol. The bases of its precipitous, weather-beaten, limestone cliffs, are strewn with blocks of all sizes, torn from their faces by wind, frost and wave, their crevices and gullies the home of innumerable sea birds, not the least interesting of which is the puffin, from which the island derives its popular name. On the northern slope stands' an old square tower with pointed roof, believed to be the remains of a church of twelfth century date, and at the extreme north-east end on the edge of a sixty-feet cliff a small four-roomed house, once a semaphore station of the Liverpool Dock Board.

The fact that the seas around swarmed with living creatures, and that the shores were carpeted with sea weed, often tempted the biologists of Liverpool to make Anglesea the centre of exploring expeditions, organised specially with the object of gaining a wider acquaintance with the marine fauna and flora of this section of the Irish Sea. That the object of these expeditions was to a certain extent gained has been proved by the issue, under the able editorship of Professor W. A. Herdman, of University College, Liverpool, of a bulky volume, entitled, The First Report upon the Fauna of Liverpool Bay.

The need of a permanent observing station somewhere in the neighbourhood and yet out of the reach of the mud and sand of the two great estuaries of the Mersey and the Dee, soon however made itself felt, and many a covetous eye was cast on the firmly-built though dismantled cottage, boldly facing the frequent north-east gales from its lofty perch on the cliffs of Puffin Island. The wish was in the present instance not only father to the thought but grandfather to the acquisition, for by the aid of kind friends, and through the untiring energy of a small band of workers, the forsaken observing station has now been transformed into a marine laboratory, over which proudly waves the blue and white ensign of the "L. M. B. C." A resident keeper takes daily observations, looks after the boats and appliances, and caters for the biologists who from time to time are glad to exchange the lecture room and laboratory for the freedom and sea breezes that are ever to be found on Puffin Island.

The value of a permanent observing station in furthering the work undertaken by the Liverpool Marine Biological Committee soon made itself felt, and a second volume of results was published in 1889, in which large additions to the previously published lists of animals and plants were recorded, and accounts given of many interesting experiments made on the abundant material obtained in the dredge and tow-net and on the shore. A Third Report is now in course of preparation, which promises to be even more valuable and interesting than the two which have preceded it.

Periodically, as the Whitsuntide holiday time comes round,

preparations are made by the local biologists for a general exodus from the city to the shores of Anglesea, and with a thoughtfulness and generosity which well deserve imitation, the expedition is provided with that all-important essential, a steamer, by the Liverpool Salvage Association. The "Hyæna" is a famous craft. She was a Government gun-boat in the Chinese wars, and in command of no less a person than General Gordon. Fitted up as she is with steam winches, electric light, and other apparatus employed in salvage work, she forms an admirable vessel for the peaceful purpose to which she is devoted during the three days the trip usually lasts. If her flat bottom and heavy spars permit of the possibility of mal de mer being thrown into the bill of fare, that undesirable sauce is accepted as a necessary evil, or treated with indifference by her passengers; if her not over-brilliant steaming power renders the journey a longer one than the average tourist might wish, there is the yarn and the song and good company to make the hours pass pleasantly until the seat of operation is reached.

On May 23rd a party of some thirty biologists from Liverpool, Sheffield, Manchester, Bangor and Edinburgh took advantage of freedom from engagements and fine weather to revisit the biological station, and carry out dredging and other biological operations on the Welsh coast. Some of the party left by ordinary passenger steamer, and arrived at Puffin Island in time to do some collecting on the shores at low tide. The island was aglow with pink and blue under the rays of the afternoon sun. The wild hyacinth and the sea thrift, safe from the sacrilegious hand of the vandal " Field Clubist," clothe the steep slopes with a variegated garment of blue and pink, lined with a golden fringe of Teucrium Scorodonia, and striped with the humble but ever-lovely daisy. Round the corners of the jagged cliffs the old-fashioned red-billed puffins watched us with inquisitive but fearless eyes, knowing right well that they and their nests were as safe as if they were floating in mid-Atlantic, and majestic gulls eyed us with curious interest as we scrambled beneath them, searching for their humbler relatives in each rock-pool and gully. With countless myriads of living forms hidden beneath the waves, or left behind by the tide on the shores, all waiting to be looked for and courting examination, surely the self-styled "naturalist" (!), who gathers but to cast away, might well give poor Mother Earth permission, at least for a few years, to reclothe, if she can, her bosom, torn bare by his selfish ignorance. In what respect is science benefited by the information which greeted me in a daily paper the morning I returned, that "Miss So-and-So had secured the prize of the day by collecting the rare Lloydia serotina;" or, that "Mr. Somebody had succeeded in unearthing a very rare fern."

Later in the evening the "Hyæna" arrived, and anchored off the island for the night. The interior of the little kitchen of the station presents a lively scene at these annual reunions.

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The entire resources of the establishment are called into service, and deficiencies in accommodation, and entire absence of the luxuries, and occasionally of not a few of the necessities, of life, are only subjects for merriment and good-natured chaff.

On the following morning the " Hyæna" steamed down the Menai Straits, dredging and tow-netting as she went, Carnarvon Bay being reached early in the afternoon. The party then slowly worked their way up the southern coast of Anglesea, anchoring for the night in a sequestered bay known as Porth Dafarth. There, after nightfall, some interesting experiments, tried with great success on a previous occasion, were again made, viz., tow-netting by electric light. A large arc-lamp was hoisted to the mast-head, and tow-nets, each with a small electric light within, were lowered to the bottom. Hosts of the smaller marine Crustacea were thus captured, and it was possible to pull up by hand-net abundant specimens of Amphipoda, Cumacea, and Schizopoda, which were to be seen darting about in the bright path of the electric ray. So enthusiastic were some of those on board that they got up at three a.m., and tow-netted along the surface of the water, with the object of determining whether the animals then to be found were different from those captured by daylight. Their energy was rewarded by securing a plentiful haul of Copepoda in great variety.

The next day was spent in dredging and tow-netting along the coast, the prizes being several rare sponges and ascidians, along with abundance of Comatula, Holothurians, Nudibranchs, Zoophytes and Polyzoa. On returning to Porth Dafarth the electric experiments of the previous evening were repeated with

success.

Monday morning brought with it the disagreeable knowledge that the holiday was at an end, and that there only remained the journey back to soot and civilization. Such regrets, however, were to a great extent tempered by the consciousness of success following on hard and healthy labour, and the knowledge not only that we were carrying home with us in the numerous collecting-jars in all probability many additions to the fauna and flora of the district, but that our three days' holiday on the sea had given each one of us a fresh stock of health and vigour wherewith to meet the less enjoyable, perhaps, but necessary labours and duties of city life. R. J. HARVEY GIBSON.

A SEABIRDS' ROCK AND ITS BRUTAL VISITORS. E have more than once had occasion to mention the good work done by the Daily Graphic for the Selbornian cause. There could be no better example of this than the admirable article in that journal for May 31, on "A Visit to a Seabirds' Rock." The rock in question is the island of Grasholm, off Milford Haven, which the writer of the article describes as a spot of the greatest interest to ornithologists, its winged inhabitants including puffins, guillemots, kittiwakes,

razorbills, gannets, and even Solan geese. The Graphic correspondent was one of a peaceful party of naturalists and artists, like that which Mr. Harvey Gibson describes in his article on "A Naturalist's Whitsuntide Holiday," in this month's NATURE NOTES, and he was especially struck with the tameness of the birds, and their fearlessness of the human species. Of the events that befell we must give his own admirable description :

near

"Every one of the hundred ledges of the orange-lichen covered rocks had its row or crowd of comical puffins watching our every movement and, when one of us was alone, appearing at the door of the tent; even the gannets, shy as they are, except at breeding time, no longer rose from their nest even at our approach; indeed, when sketching, they would allow me to come as near to them as an artist usually is to his model. On Whit Monday morning I took my book to make a few quite close studies. As I quietly passed towards them, slowly and without any quick gesture, they permitted me to sit down among them and open my book with as little notice as if I were a comrade. Delighted with this foretasting of the millennium, I sat and made several outlines, which I forward, until suddenly I heard the crack of a rifle, and thought something impinged on a crag below. Then I became aware that one of H.M. submarine miners' steamers, named 'Sir Richard Fletcher,' had hove to beside the cliffs, and that some grey-clad young men aboard were indulging in the insensate practice of shooting at the beautiful birds whose snowy plumage offered so clear a mark.

“Presently some six young men landed, and, with the boat's crew, dispersed over the island, began shooting puffins and gulls. The noise and motion soon dispersed the gannets, which fled to sea, upon which some were soon floating dead. On returning over the island in the afternoon, I came upon one of the most brutal scenes I have ever witnessed. The gannet eyries were empty of their innocent population, and, as I sat by one, I saw above me the sailors hunting out the puffins from their holes, and killing them with sticks, while three men, in the costume and with the accent of gentlemen, were wandering along the ledges of the eyrie, taking the eggs of the gannets from every nest; and, not only so, but one man was taking egg after egg, not with any purpose of preservation, but simply flinging them as fast as he could gather them over the cliff, to smash upon the rocks below a most wanton act, when it is remembered that the gannet only lays one egg. I saw him fling many, then I began to count, and before leaving, he flung over more than thirty, being about a third of the whole number originally upon that rock. The other rock had been despoiled completely before my arrival. I should have thought the man a maniac were it not that his companions were looking on, apparently with complacency, at his doings.

"When after the Sir Richard Fletcher' had sailed I visited the gannets' quarters, I found that of 200 nests within reach only two retained their eggs. The eyries are, for the present,

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deserted, and over the whole island the birds are so affrighted that hardly any appear where there were this morning myriads, and across the island there is a trail of the marauders; here and there again, groups of little bird-corpses, ending at the landing-place, where a blood-stained dead gannet lies stretched on the rock, left by the slayer, around whose neck I sincerely wish it could be hung, like that of the fateful albatross, beside a sickening pool formed of the shells and contents of a large number of eggs smashed during almost every stage of incubation. Who these chick-smashers were I know not, but they must be followed by the bitterest contempt of every true sportsman and naturalist. If they be in Her Majesty's service, so flagrant an infringement of the Wild Birds' Preservation Act can hardly pass without due notice from the authorities."

This admirable account of a most disgraceful action is made more real to us by a number of illustrations in the Daily Graphic, which give a very vivid idea of the disgusting scene of cruel and cowardly slaughter.

The intense indignation which will be excited in every reader of NATURE NOTES at the atrocious conduct described above, must not be allowed to evaporate in stormy feeling or strong language. The Selborne Society would not be worthy of its reputation and would be neglecting its mission, if it failed to do all in its power in assisting to obtain evidence for corroboration of the account given above and to punish the ruffians whose conduct is so strongly and rightly condemned. It is to be hoped that they do not in any way belong to the Royal Navy, but, if unfortunately they do, that will be only a stronger reason for their being sharply taught that it is not allowed to bring disgrace with impunity upon that noble service. The well-deserved fate of the wretched Lieutenant who wantonly dislodged the Logan Rock shows that the Admiralty can sometimes visit such offences with condign punishment. That the miscreants had the costume and accent of gentlemen adds to their guilt, and is another proof, if proof were wanted, of the homely saying that "a well-dressed blackguard is the biggest blackguard of all."

[At the last Council meeting of the Selborne Society, held on June 11th, after the above article was in type, the opinions expressed in it were thoroughly endorsed by the Members of Council present, and unanimous resolutions were passed that communications should be immediately made: (1) to the Admiralty, directing their attention to the incident; (2) to the local constabulary, asking if a prosecution had been instituted; (3) to Mr. Bryce, M. P., Vice-President of the Selborne Society, and other members of Parliament, asking them to bring the matter before the House of Commons at the earliest possible opportunity. We learn that questions have already been placed on the notice paper of the House of Commons by Sir Hussey Vivian and others, of their intention to ask the Secretary of State for War whether he will cause inquiries to be made as to the persons by whom these infractions of the law were perpetrated; and whether, if no power exists to punish them by military law, he will cause prosecutions to be instituted against them.

At the moment of going to press we read the ludicrously inadequate reply of Mr. Brodrick to Mr. Webster's questions on the subject. The offence is admitted, excuses are made for the culprits, and they are to be "reprimanded"! The matter must not end here. -EDS.]