536 BIRDS OF SOMERSETSHIRE. 
be expected, as he can swim under the water quite 
as quickly as one can row an ordinary sea-boat, and 
his first dive will perhaps take him two or three 
hundred yards off, and it is no use then waiting for 
another dive to get closer while he is below—one 
must keep hard at it and follow him up. Now and 
then a bird will turn and dive back towards the boat, 
and perhaps, just as one is giving it up altogether, 
up he will come close to the boat, giving a fine 
chance of throwing away a shot, for he is no sooner 
up than, seeing the boat close to him, down he goes 
again; but when a bird takes to dodging hke this he 
gives a better chance than when he goes straight 
away over the open right a-head: a stern chase is 
proverbially a long one, aud this is no exception to 
the rule. Perhaps a boat under sail in a good breeze 
gives a better chance than rowing in a calm, as the 
boat moves quicker, and one has not got to be 
ulways looking over one’s shoulder for the bird; but 
then the difficulty both of seeing and shooting are 
increased by the ripple of the water and the motion 
of the boat, and great care must be taken to keep to 
windward of him, for if he is once allowed to get to 
windward it is all over—he will swim and dive as 
fast again as one can beat under sail or row to wind- 
ward. On the whole, either sailing or rowing, a 
chase of a Northern Diver is sure to afford a con- 
siderable amount of excitement and sport—nearly, if 
not quite, equal to a fox hunt, and beating any 
