THE CORMORANT. 413 



able time, he is sure to bring up a fish, which he invariably swallows 

 head-foremost. Sometimes half an hour elapses before he can manage 

 to accommodate a large eel quietly in his stomach. You see him 

 straining violently, with repeated efforts to gulp it ; and when you 

 fancy that the slippery mouthful is successfully disposed of, all on a 

 sudden the eel retrogrades upwards from its dismal sepulchre, 

 struggling violently to escape. The cormorant swallows it again ; 

 and up again it comes, and shows its tail a foot or more out of its 

 destroyer's mouth. At length, worn out with ineffectual writhings 

 and slidings, the eel is gulped down into the cormorant's stomach 

 for the last time, there to meet its dreaded and inevitable fate. This 

 gormandising exhibition was witnessed here by several individuals, 

 both ladies and gentleman, on Nov. 26th, 1832, through an excellent 

 eight-and-twenty-guinea telescope ; the cormorant being at that time 

 not more than a hundred yards distant from the observers. I was 

 of the party. 



When I visited Flamborough Head in the first week in June, I was 

 disappointed in not seeing the cormorant there ; but I was informed 

 in Bridlington Quay, that this bird was not to be found nearer than 

 the rocks at Buckton ; and that it had eggs very late in the season. 

 In consequence of this information, I made a second expedition to 

 the sea-coast, and arrived at Bridlington Quay on July i4th, 1834. 



About three quarters of a mile from the sea, betwixt Flamborough 

 Head and Filey Bay, stands the once hospitable mansion of Buckton 

 Hall. I say hospitable, because its carved ornaments in stone, its 

 stately appearance, and the excellent manner in which its out-build- 

 ings have been constructed, plainly indicate that mirth and revelry 

 must once have cheered its walls. But the tide of prosperity has 

 ceased to flow. Something or other seems to have intervened, and 

 turned it down another channel; for now the once well-known 

 Buckton Hall is a neglected mansion ; and the stranger, as he passes 

 near it, sees at one glance that it is no longer a place of rendezvous 

 for the great. The present tenant kindly allowed the horse and gig, 

 which I had hired at Bridlington Quay, to be put under cover till I 

 returned from the cliff. 



My guide, whose name was Mellor, and who possesses a very 

 accurate knowlege of all the birds in this district, having mustered men 



