ormorants, kittiwakes, puffins; there is the
razor-billed auk, and that now extinct bird, the Great Auk, was seen on
the island no later than the last century.

But, indeed, it was no surprise to me to hear of this extinct species
lingering on Lundy; the strangeness and wildness of the place might
lead one to expect it to be the haunt of the Dodo, or that monstrous
and fabulous bird of the "Arabian Nights," the Giant Roc.

The hoopoe, the pretty little Southern bird which haunts the gardens of
Greece, sings its "tio, tio, tio, tio, tix" of Aristophanes' comedy on
this wind-swept Northern isle; the rose-coloured starling, that rare
and beautiful bird of a warmer clime, has been seen here in the spring;
the eagle and the golden eagle hover above its crags; the sparrow-hawk
and the great gyrfalcon prey upon the small birds and little rodents;
even the wild and shy osprey was known to build its eyrie upon Lundy to
within the last half-century.

Many of these birds are visitors only, and do not breed here; for in
the spring and the autumn, when the great tides of migration set north
and south, Lundy lies in the track of their going, and here the birds
alight, in their hundreds of thousands, to rest the wings tired with
the going and coming from Africa or Asia across the miles of water.

But whether in winter or summer, spring or autumn, any bold walker who
ventures round the cliffs and coves of Lundy will find himself
surrounded with such a crowd of screaming sea-fowl, diving, swooping,
poising, or darting, in such myriads as if the foot of man had never
yet scared them from their breeding-places, as the sea-fowl swooped and
screamed from their inviolate heights when the first Norsemen ran their
beaked ship on to the desert beaches of Iceland.

CHAPTER IX

THE LAST STRONGHOLDS OF TRADITION

Schools, newspapers, and railways have gone far in the past hundred
years to destroy the wealth of oral tradition which once satisfied the
imagination and taxed the memories of the country-dwelling population
of England. And do not let us too greatly deplore this; let us
recognize that it is better for the general welfare of the world that a
man who dwells three hundred miles from London should have some
interest, however slight, in international politics, and some
knowledge, however fragmentary, of natural forces, rather than a
slipshod belief in ghosts, witches, and the omnipotence of "squire."
It is not from such minds t