54 THE BIRD WATCHER 
gradually, so that th@ habit of swimming to the 
shore when alarmed may, possibly, be due to a long- 
enduring ancestral instinct, having nothing to do with 
sharks. 
We passed, whilst exploring one of these caverns, 
just beneath a ledge of rock, where a shag sat brood- 
ing over two tiny little things, but just hatched, 
perfectly naked, and jet black all over. This poor 
bird showed an anxiety which could hardly have been 
overpassed in the most devoted of human mothers, 
and I almost believe her sufferings were as great—for 
surely all extremities are equal. Her hoarse, bellow- 
ing cries reverberated through all the place, and 
helped, with the gloom, the murky light flung by our 
candles, the lurid colouring, and the deep, gurgling 
noises of the sea, to make a weird, Tartarean picture, 
difficult to excel. But it was not in sound alone that 
she vented her displeasure, for she was angry as well 
as alarmed. As the boat passed, she rose on the nest, 
and, in a frenzy of apprehension, snapped her bill, and 
alternately advanced and retreated her long, snake-like 
and darkly iridescent green neck. Though my head 
was but a foot or two away from her, she kept her 
place on the nest, and becoming more and more be- 
side herself, behaved, at last, in such a manner as it 
is difficult to describe, but which upon the human 
plane and amongst the lower classes, is called ‘‘ taking 
on.” Not until I actually took up one of the young 
ones, to examine it—for this I could not resist—did 
she fling herself into the water, and then it was with 
a dramatic suddenness that looked like despair. It 
