t last year in the market an average of
twenty-six cents per dozen. There has been, I was assured by the manager,
no sensible decrease in the number of the birds or the eggs during twenty
years.

From fifteen to twenty men are employed during the egging season in
collecting and shipping the eggs. They live on the island during that time
in rude shanties near the usual landing-place. The work is not amusing,
for the birds seek out the least accessible places, and the men must
follow, climbing often where a goat would almost hesitate. But this is not
the worst. The gull sits on her nest, and resists the robber who comes for
her eggs, and he must take care not to get bitten. The murre remains until
her enemy is close upon her; then she rises with a scream which often
startles a thousand or two of birds, who whirl up into the air in a dense
mass, scattering filth and guano over the eggers.

Nor is this all. The gulls, whose season of breeding is soon past, are
extravagantly fond of murre eggs; and these rapacious birds follow the
egg-gatherers, hover over their heads, and no sooner is a murre's nest
uncovered than the bird swoops down, and the egger must be extremely
quick, or the gull will snatch the prize from under his nose. So greedy
and eager are the gulls that they sometimes even wound the eggers,
striking them with their beaks. But if the gull gets an egg, he flies up
with it, and, tossing it up, swallows what he can catch, letting the shell
and half its contents fall in a shower upon the luckless and disappointed
egger below.

[Illustration: SHAGS, MURRES, AND SEA-GULLS.]

Finally, so difficult is the ground that it is impossible to carry
baskets. The egger therefore stuffs the eggs into his shirt bosom until
he has as many as he can safely carry, then clambers over rocks and down
precipices until he comes to a place of deposit, where he puts them into
baskets, to be carried down to the shore, where there are houses for
receiving them. But so skillful and careful are the gatherers that but few
eggs are broken.

The gathering proceeds daily, when it has once begun, and the whole ground
is carefully cleared off, so that no stale eggs shall remain. Thus if a
portion of the ground has been neglected for a day or two, all the eggs
must be flung into the sea, so as to begin afresh. As the season advances,
the operations are somewhat contracted, leaving a part of the island
undisturbed for breeding; and the gathering