THE GULLET. 43 



flesh, or fish, containing hair, feathers, or bony substances, 

 which are of difficult digestion, the gullet is of a vast size and 

 capacity compared with the other parts, often exceeding in 

 width the stomach itself. In some of the water-birds it is 

 large enough to contain even a whole fish till the proper 

 stomach is ready to receive it. In watching Cormorants at 

 a distance with a telescope, they may be sometimes seen quietly 



reposing, with their mouths half open, and the tail of a fish 

 hanging out, the remainder gorged in their capacious gullet : 

 and Sea-Gulls will swallow bones of three or four inches in 

 length ; the lower end only reaching the stomach, whilst the 

 rest continues in the gullet, and slips down gradually, in pro- 

 portion as these lower ends are consumed. 



The usual food of Gulls consists of fish ; but when confined 

 they will thrive very well on a diet with which they must be 

 perfectly unacquainted by the sea side. We may form, too, 

 some idea of their voracity, from the quantity consumed by a 

 Gull kept and fed in a garden, which devoured in one day 

 fourteen mice and two rats. Another was seen to swallow an 



