The lake is by no means a large one, and it is probable that the birds were attracted by the absolute security which was felt by every winged creature within the domain. His skill in

diving," writes Mr. Waterton, "is most admirable, and his success beyond belief. You may know him at a distance, among a thousand water-fowl, by his upright neck, by his body being apparently half immersed in the water, and by his being perpetually in motion when not on land.

"While the ducks and teal and widgeons are stationary on the pool, the cormorant is seen swimming to and fro, as if in quest of something. First raising his body nearly perpendicular, down he plunges into the deep, and, after staying there a considerable time, he is sure to bring up a fish, which he invariably swallows head foremost. Sometimes half an hour elapses before he can manage to accommodate a large eel quietly in his stomach.

"You see him straining violently with repeated efforts to gulp it; and when you fancy that the slippery mouthful is successfully disposed of, all on a sudden the eel retrogrades upwards from its dismal sepulchre, struggling violently to escape. The cormorant swallows it again, and up again it comes, and shows its tail a foot or more out of its destroyer's mouth. At length, worn out with ineffectual writhings and slidings, the eel is gulped down into the cormorant's stomach for the last time, there to meet its dreaded and inevitable fate."

Mr. Fortune gives a somewhat similar account of the feeding of tame Cormorants in China. The birds preferred eels to all other food, and, in spite of the difficulty in swallowing the slippery and active creature, would not touch another fish as long as an eel was left. The bird is so completely at home in the water that it does not need, like the heron and other aquatic birds, to bring its prey ashore in order to swallow it, but can eat fish in the water as well as catch them. It always seizes the fish crosswise, and is therefore obliged to turn it before it can swallow the prey with the head downwards. Sometimes it contrives to turn the fish while still under water, but, if it should fail in so doing, it brings its prey to the surface, and shifts it about in its bill, making a series of little snatches at it until the head is in the right direction. When it seizes a very large fish, the bird shakes its prey just as a dog shakes a rat, and so disables it. It is said to eat its own weight of fish in a single day.

Sometimes, when it has been very successful or exceptionally hungry, it loads itself with food to such an extent that it becomes almost insensible during the process of digestion, and, although naturally a keen-eyed and wary bird, allows itself to be captured by hand.

The nest of the Cormorant is always upon a rocky ledge, and generally on a spot which is inaccessible except by practised climbers furnished with ropes, poles, hooks, and other appurtenances. Mr. Waterton mentions that when he descended the Raincliff, a precipice some four hundred feet in height, he saw numbers of the nests and eggs, but could not get at them except by swinging himself boldly off the face of the cliff, so as to be brought by the return swing into the recesses chosen by the birds.

The nests are mostly placed in close proximity to each other, and are made of sticks and seaweeds, and, as is usual with such nests, are very inartificially constructed. The eggs are of a greenish white on the outside, and green on the inside. When found in the nest, they are covered with a sort of chalky crust, so that the true colour is not perceptible until the crust is scraped off. Two to four eggs are generally laid in, or rather on, each nest. As may be imagined from the character of the birds' food, the odour of the nesting-place is most horrible.

Sometimes, when rocks cannot be found, the Cormorant is obliged to select other spots for its nest. It is mentioned in the "Proceedings of the Zoological Society," that upon an island in the midst of a large lake there were a number of Scotch firtrees, upon the branches of which were about eighty nests of the Cormorant.

The flesh of the Cormorant is very seldom eaten, as it has a fishy flavour which is far from agreeable. To eat an old Cormorant is indeed almost impossible, but the young birds may be rendered edible by taking them as soon as killed, skinning them, removing the whole of the interior, wrapping them in cloths, and burying them for some time in the ground.

From the account of this bird, the reader will see that it may well be the Shâlâk of the Old Testament. Owing to its size and its peculiar habits, it is a very conspicuous bird, and therefore likely to be selected by name by the ancient lawgiver. And although its flesh is not very agreeable, it can be eaten; and, as

has been shown, can be rendered tolerably palatable by a very simple process. The flesh of the Solan goose is deprived in a similar manner of its naturally rank and fishy flavour.

THE PELICAN.

The Pelican of the wilderness-Attitudes of the bird-Its love of solitudeDerivation of the Hebrew word-Fantastic interpretation-Mode of feeding the young-Fables regarding the Pelican-Breeding-places of the bird-The object of its wide wings and large pouch-Colour of the Pelican.

ON page 490 it has been mentioned that in two passages of Scripture, the word which is translated in the Authorized Version as Cormorant, ought to have been rendered as PELICAN. These, however, are not the first passages in which we meet with the word kaath. The name occurs in the two parallel passages of Lev. xi. and Deut. xiv. among the list of birds which are proscribed as food. Passing over them, we next come to Ps. cii. 6. In this passage, the sacred writer is lamenting his misery: "By reason of the voice of my groaning my bones cleave to my skin.

"I am like a pelican of the wilderness: I am like an owl of the desert."

In these sentences, we see that the Kaath was a bird of solitude that was to be found in the "wilderness," i.e. far from the habitations of man. This is one of the characteristics of the Pelican, which loves not the neighbourl.ood of human beings, and is fond of resorting to broad, uncultivated lands, where it will not be disturbed.

In them it makes its nest and hatches its young, and to them it retires after feeding, in order to digest in quiet the ample meal which it has made. Mr. Tristram well suggests that the metaphor of the Psalmist may allude to the habit common to the Pelican and its kin, of sitting motionless for hours after it has gorged itself with food, its head sunk on its shoulders, and its bill resting on its breast.

This is but one of the singular, and often grotesque, attitudes in which the Pelican is in the habit of indulging.

There are before me a number of sketches made of the Pelicans at the Zoological Gardens, and in no two cases does one attitude in the least resemble another. In one sketch the

bird is sitting in the attitude which has just been described. In another it is walking, or rather staggering, along, with its head on one side, and its beak so closed that hardly a vestige of its enormous pouch can be seen. Another sketch shows the same bird as it appeared when angry with a companion, and scolding its foe in impotent rage; while another shows it basking in the

sun, with its magnificent wings spread and shaking in the warm beams, and its pouch hanging in folds from its chin.

One of the most curious of these sketches shows the bird squatting on the ground, with its head drawn back as far as possible, and sunk so far among the feathers of the back and shoulders that only a portion of the head itself can be seen, while the long beak is hidden, except an inch or two of the end. In this attitude it might easily be mistaken at a little distance for an oval white stone.

The derivation of the Hebrew word kaath is a very curious one. It is taken from a verb signifying "to vomit," and this derivation has been explained in different ways.

The early writers, who were comparatively ignorant of natural history, thought that the Pelican lived chiefly on molluscs, and that, after digesting the animals, it rejected their shells, just as the owl and the hawk reject the bones, fur, and feathers of their prey. They thought that the Pelican was a bird of a hot temperament, and that the molluscs were quickly digested by the heat of the stomach: "conchas enim, calore ventris coctas, rursus evomit, ut testis rejectis, esculenta seligat."

At the present day, however, knowing as we do the habits of the Pelican, we find that, although the reasons just given are faulty, and that the Pelican lives essentially on fish, and not on molluscs, the derivation of the word is really a good one, and that those who gave the bird the name of Kaath, or the vomiter, were well acquainted with its habits.

The bird certainly does eat molluscs, but the principal part of its diet is composed of fish, which it catches dexterously by a sort of sidelong snatch of its enormous bill. The skin under the lower part of the beak is so modified that it can form, when distended, an enormous pouch, capable of holding a great quantity of fish, though, as long as it is not wanted, the pouch is so contracted into longitudinal folds as to be scarcely perceptible. When it has filled the pouch, it usually retires from the water, and flies to a retired spot, often many miles inland, where it can sit and digest at its ease the enormous meal which it has made.

As it often chooses its breeding-places in similar spots, far from the water, it has to carry the food with which it nourishes its young for many miles. For this purpose it is furnished, not