164 BIRD WATCHING 



"As with its wings aslant 

 Sails the fierce cormorant 

 Seeking some rocky haunt," 



says Longfellow lines which, to me at least, call 

 up a graphic picture of the bird, though I do not 

 know that the first contains anything which is 

 specially characteristic of it ; and Milton has re- 

 corded as we may, perhaps, assume the way in 

 which its uncouth shape appealed to him by making 

 it that which his grand angel-devil chooses, on one 

 occasion, to assume. On another one, it may be 

 remembered, Satan takes for his purposes the form 

 of a toad, and on each, no doubt, the poet, who never 

 appears to yield to the strong temptation (as one 

 would imagine) of loving his great creation, has 

 intended to convey a general idea of fitness and 

 symbolical similarity as between the disguised being 

 and the disguise taken. 



It has been conjectured that the habit which the 

 cormorant has of standing for a length of time with 

 its wings spread out and loosely drooping, suggested 

 to Milton its appropriateness, and certainly there is 

 an o'er-brooding, possession-taking appearance in this 

 attitude of the bird, in keeping with the ideas which 

 may be supposed to reign in Satan's breast as he 

 looks down from the high tree of life upon the garden 

 of Eden and its two newly created inhabitants. In- 

 dependently of this, however, the bird, as it stands 

 in its ordinary posture, firmly poised, the body not 

 quite upright but inclined somewhat forward, with 

 the curved neck and strong hooked beak thrown 

 into bold relief the dark webbed feet grasping firmly 

 on the rock has in it something suggestive both of 



