summit of a beetling cliff, and watch the breeding sea-fowl on the ledges below? In the Shetlands, at least, it is possible to do this in perfect safety, for the strata of the rock have often been tilted up to such an extent that, whilst the precipice formed by their broken edges is of the most fearful description, their slope, even on the landward side, is so steep that when one has climbed it, and flung oneself full length at the top, one's head looks down—as mine does now—as from a slanting wall, against which one's body leans. To fall over, one would first have to fall upwards, and the knowledge of this gives a feeling of security, without which one could hardly observe or take notes. The one danger lies in becoming abstracted and forgetting where one is. Those steep, green banks—for the rock, except in smooth, unclimbable patches, is covered with lush grass—have no appearance of an edge, and I have often shuddered, whilst plodding mechanically upwards, to find myself but just awakened from a reverie, within a yard or so of their soft-curled, lap-like crests. But I think my "subliminal," in such cases, was always pretty well on the watch, or—to adopt a more prosaic and now quite obsolete explanation—the reverie was not a very deep one.
At any rate, here I am safe, and, looking down again from my old "coign of vantage" of two years before, the same wonderful and never forgotten—never-to-be-forgotten—sight presents itself. Here are the guillemots, the same individual birds, standing—each
