as the deposit of guano on the rocks will spoil anything; and only let him smell his hands after his exploit—­they do smell so nice!  One of the parents generally stands by the young after they are hatched, I suppose to prevent them from wandering about and falling off the rocks, as the positions of some of them seem very critical, there being only just room for the family to stand; the other parent is generally away fishing, only returning at intervals to feed his family and dry his feathers before making a fresh start; sometimes one parent takes a turn to stay by the young, and sometimes the other.  The usual number of young appeared to be three, sometimes only one or two; but in these cases it is probable that a young one or two may have waddled off the rock, or got into a crevice from which the parents could not extricate it, accidents which I should think frequently happen; or an egg or two may have been blown from the nest, or egg or young fallen a victim to some marauding Herring Gull during the absence of the parents.  The Shag assumes its full breeding-plumage and crest very early; I have one in perfect breeding-plumage, killed in February; and Miss C.B.  Carey mentions in the ‘Zoologist’ having seen one in Mr. Couch’s shop with its full crest in January.  I do not quite know at what time the young bird assumes adult plumage, but I have one just changing from the brown plumage of the young to adult plumage.  Many of the green feathers of the adult are making their appearance amongst the brown ones; this one I shot on the 26th June, 1866, near the harbour Goslin, at Sark, near a large breeding-station of Shags and Herring Gulls:  if it is, as I suppose, a young bird of the year, it would show a very early change to adult plumage, but of course it might have been a young bird of the previous year; but, as a rule, young birds of the previous year are not allowed about the breeding-stations, any more than they are by the Herring Gulls.

The Shag is included in Professor Ansted’s list, but curiously enough only marked as occurring in Guernsey.  There are two adult specimens and one young bird and one young in down in the Museum.

162.  GANNET. Sula bassana, Linnaeus.  French, “Fou de bassan.”—­The Gannet, or Solan Goose, as it is sometimes called, is a regular autumn and winter visitant to all the Islands, but never so numerous, I think, as on the south coast of Devon; birds, however, in all states of plumage, young birds as well as adults, and in the various intermediate or spotted states of plumage, make their appearance.  It stays on through the winter, but never remains to breed as it does regularly at Lundy Island.  I have seen both adults and young birds fishing round Guernsey, and Mrs. Jago (late Miss Cumber) told me she had had several through her hands when she was the bird-stuffer there; she also wrote to me on the 16th March, 1879, to say a fully adult Gannet had been shot in Fermain Bay on the 15th; and Mr. Grieve, the carpenter and bird-stuffer