522 THE GANNET. 



place a platform under the surface of the water, fastening 

 herrings or other fishes over it, so that the Gannets break 

 their necks in striking it, or fasten themselves by their bills 

 in the wood. They are ready detectives and close attend- 

 ants upon shoals of fish, and so are of great service in 

 directing the fishermen. No matter how high a point in 

 the air the Gannet descends from, so complete is the adjust- 

 ment of his eye, in the rapid passage of the distance to 

 the water, that it seldom if ever fails to rise with its prey. 

 It is also a bird of select diet, disdaining, unless sorely 

 pressed by hunger, anything beneath a herring or mackerel. 



Though this short-legged species shuffles along awk- 

 wardly on the ground, it swims buoyantly, aided by its 

 highly aerated body even to the air-cells between the body 

 and the skin, and by its totipalmate feet, the four long toes 

 being completely webbed. 



Every careful observer must have noted a certain peculiar 

 evolution of the Gannet in flight. When large numbers are 

 pursuing a shoal of fish, circling like kites over the spot, 

 they will keep forming into a broad perpendicular proces- 

 sion downward into the waves, and shooting out of the 

 water some distance off, will sweep up again into the mov- 

 ing mass, to take their places in due time in the continu- 

 ously moving column. The intersecting circles, against the 

 sky, of the immense moving multitudes overhead, might 

 suggest a monstrous snow-storm; and no whirl of wind or 

 water could be grander or more precise than this circulat- 

 ing mass of spirited living beings. The same grand 

 evolution may be seen about the bastion-like rocks 

 in the wild ocean, where they breed in almost count- 

 less numbers. Filling the air by thousands and tens of 

 thousands, and moving out, up, and back, they will pour 

 down over the huge cliffs to the surging, roaring sea, 



