At sea, or on the inland lakes, they make terrible havoc. From the greatest height they drop down upon the object of pursuit, dive after it with the rapidity of a dart, and with an almost unerring certainty, seize the victim ; then emerging, with the fish across the bill, with a kind of twirl, throw it up into the air, and, dexterously catching it head foremost, swallow it whole.

While at rest on the shore, commonly on the ledge of a projecting rock, these birds sit more or less in an erect posture, and are propped up by the stiff feathers of the tail; and in places where they have not experienced the fatal effects of the gun, they have been known, however wary at other times, to sit and receive repeated shots, without offering to remove out of the danger.* At other times and places, while they sit in a dozing and stupified state, from the effects of one of their customary surfeits, they may easily be taken by throwing nets over them, or by putting a noose around their necks, which they avoid no further than by slipping the head from side to side as long as they can.

Notwithstanding the natural wildness of their disposition, it seems, according to some accounts, that certain species of these birds have formerly been tamed and

* Dr Heysham relates that, about the year 1759, one of these birds "perched upon the castle at Carlisle, and soon afterwards removed to the cathedral, where it was shot at upwards of twenty times without effect: "In at length a person got upon the cathedral, fired at, and killed it." another instance, a flock of fifteen or twenty perched, at the dusk of evening, in a tree on the banks of the river Esk, near Netherby, the seat of Sir James Graham. A person who saw them settle, fired at random at them in the dark six or seven times, without either killing any or frightening them away: surprised at this, he came again, at day light, and killed one; whereupon the rest took flight."

rendered subservient to the purposes of man, both in this and in other countries. Among the Chinese, it is said, they have frequently been trained to fish, and that some fishermen keep many of them for that purpose, by which they gain a livelihood. "A ring, placed round the neck, hinders the bird from swallowing; its natural appetite joins with the will of its master, and it instantly dives at the word of command; when unable to gorge down the fish it has taken, it returns to the keeper, who secures it to himself. Sometimes, if the fish be too big for one to manage, two will act in concert, one taking it by the head and the other by the tail."* In England, according to Willoughby,† they were hood-winked in the manner of the Falcons, till they were let off to fish, and a leather thong was tied round the lower part of their necks, to prevent them swallowing the fish. Whitlock tells us

that he had a cast of them manned like Hawks,

* Latham.

+ "When they come to the rivers, they take off their hoods, and having tied a leather thong round the lower part of their necks, that they may not swallow down the fish they catch, they throw them into the river. They presently dive under water, and there for a time, with wonderful swiftness, they pursue the fish, and when they have caught them, they arise presently to the top of the water, and pressing the fish lightly with their bills, they swallow them, till each bird hath in this manner swallowed five or six fishes; then their keepers call them to the fist, to which they readily fly, and, little by little, one after another, vomit up all their fish, a little bruised with the nip they gave them with their bills. When they have done fishing, setting the birds on some high place, they loose the string from their necks, leaving the passage to the stomach free and open, and for their reward they throw them part of the prey they have caught, to each, perchance, one or two fishes, which they by the way, as they are falling in the air, will catch most dexterously in their mouths." -Willoughby.

which would come to hand." He took much pleasure in them, and relates, that the best he had was one presented to him by Mr Wood, Master of the Corvorants to Charles I.

This tribe seems possessed of energies not of an ordinary kind; they are of a stern sullen character, with a remarkably keen penetrating eye, and a vigorous body; and their whole deportment carries along with it the appearance of the wary circumspect plunderer, the unrelenting tyrant, and the greedy insatiate glutton, rendered lazy only when the appetite is palled, and then they sit puffing forth the fetid fumes of a gorged stomach, vented occasionally in the disagreeable croakings of their hoarse hollow voice. Such is their portrait, such the character generally given of them by ornithologists; and Milton seems to have put the finishing hand to it, by making Satan personate the Corvorant, while he surveys, undelighted, the beauties of Paradise.* It ought, however, to be observed, that this bird, like other animals, led only by the cravings of appetite, and directed by instinct, fills the place and pursues the course assigned to it by nature.

*Paradise Lost, Book iv. 1. 194-198.

THE CRESTED CORVORANT.

THE crest is black, and longer than that of the Great Black Corvorant: the crown of the head, and nearly the whole neck, are streaked downwards with scratches of white and dusky: a white gorget hangs from the cheeks, and covers the chin; this is bounded behind by a broadish black fillet, which partly covers the auriculars, and is extended to the corner of each eye: a patch of white feathers covers the hinder part of each thigh: the rest of its plumage is the same as that of the preceding species; it character is also similar.

It is not yet clearly ascertained whether this is a variety of the last, or a distinct species, or whether it is the Corvorant in the garb of its highest adult state. Latham inclines to the latter opinion, and supposes the streaked head and different markings of its plumage to be acquired only by age. Buffon, in his Planches Enluminées, has given its figure as the Corvorant; and Pennant, differing from them, makes it a species of the Shag. Mr Tunstall was in doubt on this subject, but discovered, by dissection, that the whiteness under the chin and on the thighs is not confined to the males, for one with these marks, which was sent to him out of Holderness, in Yorkshire, in 1775, was full of eggs. The above figure was taken from the specimen in his museum.