of this kind would be both interesting and instructive. It would form a key to the diet of every bird represented in it, but its crowning merit—one quite beyond estimation—would be that it would not increase the rarity or cause the extinction of a single species. For these reasons—more particularly the last one—I do not at all anticipate that such a collection will ever be made.
I had already concluded, therefore, that it was the gulls who ate the heather-berries, before I began to see them walking in flocks over the ness, and most assiduously doing so. First this was of an evening—always herring-gulls—then at all times of the day; but the evening continued to be the great time. Just as the kittiwakes, two years ago, used to feed, ghost-like, about my shepherd's-hut, through the short, light nights of June, so here, from my little sentry-box, I began now to watch these larger ghosts, as I sat at the door both eating and cooking my supper. From the door to the stove was a stretch—and there were many stretches—and after one of them the shadows would be fallen, and the ghosts hid, or fled. Then came other ghosts sometimes—all past scenes are ghosts—"Da hab'ich viel blasse Leichen," etc. Oh, it was sweet, then, in the little bunk, by the candle in its block of ship-wood, with a rivet-hole for the socket, in the fading glow of the peat-fire, to read the poets I had brought with me—Shakespeare, or Molière, or Heine—in those surroundings. That was the time to read—for it's all over now—amongst
