At Breakfast, Dixner, Tea, Supper. 25 



through a thm layer of snow, I doubt not there was 

 a shrewd notion of benefits to be derived. 



Birds also help quadrupeds to obtain their food 

 upon occasion. The illustration on page 27 shows 

 a number of wild cherry stones which were brouo-ht 

 from a neighbouring wood by birds, and dropped 

 from the branches of a big tree growing near the 

 middle of an open pasture. They were collected by 

 some mouse and carried to the hole shown in the 

 picture, in order to be stored and gnawed open for 

 their kernels as required for consumption. 



Gannets, Terns, and Kingfishers, although all of 

 them unable to dive in the proper sense of the word 

 like Cormorants and Grebes, yet get their living by 

 plunging headlong into the water after fish swim- 

 ming not far from the surface. The Gannet breeds 

 in vast numbers on the giant rock stacks round the 

 island of St. Kikla, also on Ailsa Craig and the Bass 

 Rock, and a very good authority has computed that 

 the birds catch more herrings round the coast of 

 Scotland than all the fishermen of that country 

 put together. 



The natives of the Orkney Islands used to try to 

 reduce the stock of Gannets fishing- in their neio-h- 

 bourhood by painting counterfeit herrings on blocks 

 of wood, which they moored in such positions as 

 to allow them to float a little way below the surface 

 of the ocean. When a bird came sailinsf alone he 

 fancied he espied a nice fat herring below, and 

 straightway plunging upon it, struck the block of 



