BIRDS IN TRAINING 29 



on board, and how well they all knew what 

 was going to happen when the fishing was 

 finished, when they crowded round him on 

 the raft to be uncollared and fed. In fact, 

 they were the only performing animals I ever 

 saw which seemed to enjoy their work, which, 

 after all, was quite natural, as it was what 

 they did every day in the ordinary course of 

 things. 



Cormorants have been trained in England 

 by Englishmen, and the sport was practised 

 in James I.'s time ; and, although a full- 

 grown wild-caught cormorant is a most spite- 

 ful and unpleasant bird to handle at first, it 

 is found that he can be tamed and trained, 

 though no doubt hand-reared ones would be 

 much easier to manage. 



But, generally speaking, Europeans have 

 given up the custom of making birds work 

 for them, and so even hawking, which is a 

 much more generally popular sport than cor- 

 morant - fishing, is very little practised among 

 us nowadays. In the olden times the sport 

 was so popular that one can hardly under- 

 stand Shakespeare, for instance, unless one 

 knows something about the language of 



