ITS WAY OF FISHING. 479 



very generally distributed throughout Scandinavia, from 

 Scania to northern Lapland, as high up at least as the 70 

 N. latitude, and that not only on the coast, but in the lakes 

 and rivers of the interior. Properly speaking, it is not 

 migratory; ice, rather than cold, may occasion it to retire 

 for a while, but so soon as the water is open again, it reap- 

 pears the young birds, however, which are much more 

 susceptible to cold than the old ones, at a somewhat later 

 period. Unless when the weather was unusually severe, some 

 generally passed the whole winter in the rapids of the Gotha, 

 and the like is doubtless the case in other rivers in Sweden. 

 In Denmark it is tolerably common in the winter time, and 

 some few breed there. 



The goosander feeds on fish, worms, and insects " some- 

 times also," Ekstrom says, " on aquatic plants." " It is a 

 most voracious fish-swallower," Nilsson informs us, " its 

 gullet is very capacious, and its stomach possessed of an 

 extraordinary power of digestion. I myself once shot a male 

 bird of this species that had a viviparous blenny (Zoarces 

 viviparus, Cuv.) of twelve inches in length, and proportionate 

 thickness, in its throat. The tail of the fish reached up to 

 the very bill itself; and the head, then in the bird's stomach, 

 was already for the most part digested." 



The way in which the goosander fishes in the autumn 

 displays an extraordinary degree of ingenuity. At that 

 season these birds resort, either in families or in flocks, to 

 some lake or other water that abounds with the finny tribe. 

 Selecting an inlet, the whole troop form a line at its outer 

 extremity, and, advancing gradually and in regular order, 

 they either by diving, or beating the water with their pinions, 

 drive the fish before them. On the strand being neared, 



