CHAPTER XV. 



FOOD AND FISHING. 



Habits of the Gannet continued — Its food — The amount of 

 fish required — Its methods of fishing — by plunging from a great 

 height — very different when feeding on a shoal of fry. 



Food of the Gannet. — The Gannet is undeniably a bird of 

 voracious appetite ; that its best friends can hardly gainsay, 

 and accordingly Nature has provided it with a wide and very 

 dilatable oesophagus, the upper part of which can expand 

 to a width of four inches, and the proventriculus is corre- 

 spondingly large. It has besides a rapid digestion, which 

 quickly causes all the food swallowed to be assimilated, 

 thereby further increasing its requirements. Yet the 

 interval of time between ingestion and copious evacuation 

 may not be more rapid in the Gannet than in many other 

 birds. Ever on the look-out as it flies along, little that is 

 in the waters escapes the Gannet's keen and searching eye. 

 According to the latitude in which it finds itself, so does 

 it readily adapt its taste to different sorts of fish, so that 

 be it the sild of Iceland, the coal-fish of the Shetlands, 

 the mackerel of British seas, the " sardine " of the 



