were, the water was so clear that we could see the bottom, and watch the swift and easy movements of these beasts so awkward on land.

The keepers shoot the seals for their oil, bristles, and other valuable parts, and sometimes mount the heads of the larger bulls for sale as ornaments. It requires a good shot and an experienced hunter to secure this game; for unless the bullet is instantly fatal the wounded seal at once dashes into the water and sinks out of reach. The hunter watches his chance, and picks out a seal that is lying so that the body cannot roll into the surf, and sends his bullet straight into the brain.

Unless wounded and cornered they will not attack a man; it is chiefly by their mad rush to the water that they endanger any one in their way. Mr. Beeman, Chief Keeper, told us of a narrow escape of his. He leaped down into a fissure of the rocks, and nearly landed on top of a very large bull. The startled animal darted away from him, and by chance farther back up the narrow fissure. As Mr. Beeman gathered himself together from his jump he saw that the old bull was preparing to charge. There was no room to allow him to pass and no possibility of scrambling up the rocks out of his way. To wound him would be worse than useless. It was bull or Beeman at the first shot. The fact that Mr. Beeman told the story shows the effect of the shot.

Far more abundant than the seals and far more interesting are the birds. Their cries are the most constant sound, their odor the prevailing smell, their multitudinous flitting the most constant sight, on the island. The chief product of the island in the San Francisco markets is their eggs, and the island is most widely known, except for its light, by the eggpicking industry.

There are eight kinds of birds that habitually nest on the Farallones in numbers.

VOL. XX-21.

1. The murre. This bird is often seen swimming in the Bay, when it much resembles a duck. It has a black head, slate-colored body, and white breast. When alarmed in the water, it either dives or flies off, splashing along the surface of the waves. It flies swiftly, with a whir of the wings almost as quick as a humming birds; it never sails on motionless wing, as the gulls delight in doing, and looks under-sparred; that is, without much spread of wing for its bulk. On the rocks it sits upright like a penguin, and generally in great crowds. It is said by Nordhoff that the murre eats sea grasses and jelly fish, and that no other fish has ever been found in its stomach. It lays a very large egg for the size of the bird, the Farallon egg of the market. These eggs are remarkable for thick shells and great diversity in color and markings. They are about twice the size of a hen's egg, and are sometimes pure white, sometimes bluish green, sometimes pinkish. Some are splashed with black or brown all over, or near the larger end; some are streaked with vermicular markings of light brown, dark brown, purple, or yellow; some are covered all over with spatters of reddish brown. They are laid on the bare rocks, without the least attempt at a nest. One is the complement if undisturbed; but when they are taken a murre will lay as many as eight. There is a prevailing suspicion that these eggs are inferior to hen's eggs because of a fishy flavor. Few people order them or eat them by preference. Now, I do make solemn affirmation, to the support of which I can bring many trustworthy corroborating witnesses, that when these murre eggs are perfectly fresh there is absolutely no fishy or strong taste to them whatever; that they are rich, delicate, and altogether desirable,-dropped, fried, boiled, or cooked in any of the hundred ways known to Frenchmen. It is true that they acquire a rank taste sooner than hen's eggs, and that accounts for the

It is certain that San Francisco dwellers in the summer time, if they eat at restaurants or buy cake or pies at the bakeries, consume a great many of these eggs. Twenty-five cents a dozen is the retail price, and the size of the egg is double that of the barnyard fowl's; so they are bought eagerly to the full extent of the supply, something like four hundred dozen daily at the height of the season. When the Artist and I were there it was still early, and there were from fourteen to eighteen baskets. of about twenty dozen each gathered daily. The season begins in June, or late in May, and lasts from six to eight weeks. The pickers net from fifteen to eighteen cents a dozen.

2. The gull is next to the murre in numbers, and is the most constant bird on the islands; for the others come there to nest, and migrate in the winter, while there are gulls all the year round. They are the Western gulls, the ordinary white birds with slate-colored back and upper surface of the wings, that are numerous and tame about the ferrics in San Francisco. Their eggs too are good eating, though not so large as a murre's, but the shell is not nearly so thick, and so they are not much gathered for transportation. They are a dark olive brown, with darker brown splashes all over them. Three are the complement in a nest, which is built of dried grasses roughly shaped. The gulls are great robbers, and if they find a murre's egg unprotected, one swoops down on it and. carries it off in his beak. Up in the air he goes, then drops the egg on a convenient rock, and descends to feast on its spilled contents. This thievish propensity makes the gulls no favorites

the murres driven from their cliffs by the approach of the pickers, than the gulls are busy carrying off the eggs, "and they are better eggpickers than we are," one of the keepers ruefully said

to me.

They are said to eat the young murres also. After a murre has laid an egg she sits on it constantly, unless driven off by the men, and never leaves it unprotected a single moment until the young bird is able to accompany its parents for a swim in the ocean.

The disposition of the gull varies much with the season. Now in laying time they are peaceable and tame, looking on men as allies in their attacks on the murres. They do not take much to heart the plunder of their own nests. When they have young birds to protect they become savage, and do not hesitate to dash in the face of an intruder, or to snatch his cap from his head. This is an element of no little danger to the pickers toward the close of the season ; for a sudden swoop of a gull on a man poised on the edge of a sheer precipice is not pleasant. Later still in the season the gulls become wild, and it is difficult to get within a stone's throw of one.

One day we saw one of the Greeks coming down the trail to the houses, holding a live gull by one wing. The other wing had been broken by a stone thrown by the Greek, but the bird was snapping viciously and effectively at the man's legs as he walked.

"He steala my cap," was the explanation, with an expression of disrepect. So this vengeful son of Athens - all Greeks come from Athens, so they say - tied his captive to a post, and threw stones at it till the bird was dead.

3. Next in order of numerical strength, is the shag, or cormorant, though possibly the puffin is entitled to the place. There are three species of shag, Brandt's, Baird's, and the Farallon. I learned to distinguish two. One was jet black all over, the other had white markings on its back. It has a long neck, and flies with it outstretched in a seemingly awkward position. They usually fly in pairs or fours, in the nest. ing season, and gather into longer trains flying one after another in other seasons. Its nest is set in clefts and shelves of the cliffs overhanging the sea, and is formed of a bunch of dried herbage. The eggs are very small for the size of the bird, long and pointed, a light blue when washed, but when gathered, covered with a layer of loose white lime. As mentioned, they are not used for eating, and it is said the white does not coagulate with heat. The shag has the reputation of being a very stupid bird. It is the largest of them all.

4. The tufted puffin, or sea parrot. The second name of the bird is quite descriptive, for it resembles very much a parrot, if a parrot were ever black with a white face, and a very red beak and feet. The two long tufts of white filaments that start from the head above the ears are not visible except close at hand. This bird lays one large, round, white egg, in the deeper clefts of the highest rocks. The nest I found was within a few feet of the light tower, and in so deep a cleft that I had to roll the egg out, using the whole length of my cane to reach it. The bird was not at home, or I might have had trouble, for they are said to fight savagely in defense of their nests.

5. The pigeon guillemot, or sea pigeon, comes next. Its home is to be found close to the water's edge, in the little coves and clefts of the rocks, and it delights to sit on a rock where it is almost reached by every return of the swell. It clings closer to the water than

any bird of them all. It is of a dark slate color, with some white in the wing coverts, and it has brilliantly red feet. Its mouth and throat, when it opens the beak, is also bright red. In shape and appearance it well merits the name of pigeon, though somewhat larger. It nests in crevices, and the egg, about as large as a hen's egg, is light greenish blue, with brown and gray spots on it. The sea pigeon's voice would betray it instantly should it be taken for a tame pigeon, for it is sharp and shrill.

6. The smallest bird on the island comes next, the rock wren. Yet the island could ill spare him, for he is a merry little fellow and has the only sweet voice among them. His little warble would not be noticed much, perhaps, among thrushes or larks; and yet it is pleasant to hear in this wild chorus of the harsh voices of sea birds. He would pass very well for a wren, except that he is not so much tilted up aft, and he has a very long bill. The egg is a dainty little thing, white, but given a pink tone by a multitude of little reddish-brown splashes. His nest is hard to find, for it is hidden deep, and he is an adept at misleading a person in search of it. This is strange, too, in a bird that never saw a school boy. Aside from this preference that you should not know where his nest is, the rock wren is a sociable fellow, and will hop round quite near you if you keep still, and sing his song from every little point of rocks in your neighborhood.

7. The auk, Cassin's auklet, is a night bird, and hides in clefts in the daytime. It is a gray bird, about as large as a pigeon. The egg, also, is much the size, color, and shape, of a pigeon's. When pulled out of the hiding place it had chosen into the daylight, a young one we had caught seemed to be quite blind, and sat quietly in my open hand, making no effort to fly. When released on the ground it found sight enough to discover a crevice near

at hand, and quickly crawled into it so far that it was lost to me.

8. The ashy petrel is a very rare bird; so rare that I saw no specimen to know it. It resembles the Mother Carey's chicken closely, differing in having some white markings on the wings. Its nest is hard to find, be cause of its scarcity, and because it is built deep in the rocky clefts. It is discovered best by smell; for the bird, its nest, and its eggs, have a strong musky odor.

This completes the catalogue of birds

JERRY, THE OLDEST INHABITANT.

usually to be found, but for the last two seasons there has been a family of strange visitors to this sea-girt island. An old crow and his wife have come here to rear their brood. It is a curiously incongruous sound to hear the fa miliar caws amid this querulous chorus of gulls, but though there is not a cornfield within at least sixteen miles of them, the crows seem to be perfectly contented.

The day when we first saw egg-picking, they pick every day in the season, -the Greeks and the four keepers gathered in front of the old stone house that was long the only keeper's house, at about nine o'clock in the morning. The men were dressed for the work in egg blouses

of cotton. Often the words "Extra Family," or the like, showed that they were made of flour sacks. They are quite loose, and are gathered at the waist with a stout string. They are cut with a V-shaped opening in front. The trousers are bound with cords at the ankle, so that they may not catch on the rocks. The shoes are peculiar, home-made for the special purpose, the tops of canvas, the soles of braided rope. These are not only more durable than leather on the jagged rocks, but are less apt to slip, and in them a man can climb up a cliff so steep that he looks ridiculously like a fly walking up a wall.

When the fifteen men had all gathered, Old George - 70 years old, and yet as active as any Greek of them all, does not spare himself the most arduous climbs - gave the word in pure modern Hellenic, and they moved off together. First they made their way past the Russian houses, and paused at the base of the cliff on Shubrick's Point. There they set down the baskets. At another word they separated, and began climbing over the hill as rapidly as they could. Their movements started a cloud of murres, which fluttered with a characteristic motion straight downward toward the water,-right in the picker's face, if he chanced to be below them.

The gulls were on hand, and as the murres were driven away from the cliffs the gulls swooped down and snatched the eggs away before the pickers could get to them. This is why it is necessary for the men to keep together, and work one place at a time. But the men got a good many; they scrambled over the rocks like cats, and went to places that fairly made us shudder to watch them. Soon their outlines showed as they came around the profile of the other side of the hill. But they were strangely altered. They moved with more care, and used their hands to help support the immense aldermanic development they had acquired. As they

came back to the baskets some of them got down on all fours, and emptied their blouses, as though pouring potatoes from a sack. The thick shell of the eggs allows this, though some were broken in the process. Others who had emptied their pouches were sitting around wiping a chance-broken egg out of their blouses with a wisp of dry grass. The baskets, when full, were covered over with grass or weeds weighted with stones,-otherwise the gulls would have emptied them before the men came again. Next the men picked on the Lighthouse Hill, loftiest of all, but not most dangerous. Yet it was here that Keeper Cashin had a severe fall a year or two ago: he still wears a deep scar on his brow, as the result of his long tumble.

"That must have made you give up egg-picking for a while," I said to him. "Yes, it was two weeks before I was out with them again."

The Artist and I could not go around the northeast side of the island from its roughness, though we amazed ourselves at the places we did climb to. We hurried around the other way, to see the men come down to the North Landing. As they were approaching it, still picking, we heard a cry. One of them had dislodged a great, jagged stone, and shouted to warn a comrade directly underneath. The warned man flattened against the rock, and the stone dashed by close to his head. Some of the men came with full blouses to the egg house near the landing; others brought the full baskets. They were set down near the house, tubs of salt water were brought, and the eggs were carefully washed. As they are laid on the bare rock, no nest whatever, they are apt to be soiled with guano, and it requires a good rubbing of each egg with a cloth to get it off.

During this process the gulls came and sat in a circle at a respectful distance, so that they might get the eggs that were broken and thrown away.

While some of the men were washing, a boatload of them did Sugar Loaf Rock. We could see them well from the egg house. The little boat was rowed to the rock, and turned so as to approach it stern first. As the swell lifted it to the rock, a man sprang out and climbed up the rocks. Soon a row of men were clambering right up the face of the rock,- shown in the picture (p. 229). It looked as impossible as to walk up the steepest side of Telegraph Hill. This, with Saddle Rock, was one day's picking.

Next day they did the West End, Arch and Finger rocks, and one or two more. The West End climb is a wonderful one; for here is the largest crowd of birds on the island. The air at times was so full of startled birds that they looked like a swarm of bees, and the water was in places almost hidden from sight by the multitudes that took refuge there.

To get to West End we had to cross over "Jordan," as the narrow, surfwashed passage is called. It is spanned by a very picturesque swinging bridge, made of pieces of water-worn wreckage. On the West End, too, is the place called the Great Rookery.

Here and on Finger Rock the men let themselves down by ropes to some difficult places. It looks risky to see a man dangling from a rope over a sheer precipice that overhangs the dashing surf. The men are perfectly hardened to it, and never seem to think of danger in any part of this perilous work.

The pickers in this way go over the same ground every other day, and cover all accessible points in two days. This insures the freshness of the eggs gathered, as between gulls and men they are thoroughly cleaned from the ground traversed by the pickers. There are enough. inaccessible places to prevent any danger that the murres will diminish in numbers.

The eggs are stored in the egg house