SNAKE-BIRD. 375 



" I doubt not but if this bird had been an inhabitant of the 

 Tiber in Ovid's days, it would have furnished him with a sub- 

 ject for some beautiful and entertaining metamorphoses. I be- 

 lieve they feed entirely on fish, for their flesh smells and tastes 

 intolerably strong of it: it is scarcely to be eaten, unless one is 

 constrained by insufferable hunger. They inhabit the waters of 

 Cape Fear river, and, southerly, East and West Florida. * 



* Bartram's Travels, p. 132. MS, in the possession of the author, f 

 t From Mr. Ord's Supplementary Volume. 



vol. in. 3 c 



