The Shear-Water.] OF ORKNEY. 129^ 



likewise take the old ones in March, but these are poor, and 

 not near so good as the young. 



An old lyre weighs seventeen ounces ; in length eighteen 

 inches ; breadth twenty-six ; the bill is about an inch and a 

 half long ; the upper mandible black, the lower lead-colour- 

 ed ; the nostrils are placed very near one another in a bald 

 skin of the upper part of the bill, they are small and round ; 

 the body is long and cylindrical ; the back and whole upper 

 side black ; the throat, breast, and belly white ; the feet are 

 placed very far back ; the leg bones thin, the colour various, 

 in some greenish and black, in others white before and black 

 behind. . , 



There are various accounts of the manner of feeding of this 

 bird ; however, the make of its bill, I should think, pronoun- 

 ces it a fisher, and in the stomach of one I dissected I found 

 a piece of a fish, surrounded with a greenish liquor, but so 

 much decayed that I could not make out what kind it was. 

 Our country people say it scums the water, and lives on the oil 

 it finds there ; but the form of its bill denies that. The last no- 

 tion is from its spouting a quantity of oil from its throat; but 

 this is not peculiar to it, but to the whole genus, and is its food 

 reduced to this in its stomach. 



R 



