"South Farallon Island: Gathering the Eggs of the Murr," Eadweard Muybridge, c. 1870

Two egg pickers climbing the rocks of South Farallon Island, thirty miles out from the Golden Gate, in one of Muybridge’s stereographs of the Pacific coast. From the gold rush on, the eggs of the murres and gulls that nested on the islands were gathered by the boatload for the markets of San Francisco, where hens’ eggs were scarce and dear. Richard Holbrook gathered them from his sloop in 1851.