390 



THE CORMORANT. 



The Cormorant. 



The quantity of fish one of these birds will devour is 

 astonishing three or four pounds a day, or about half their 

 weight, a Cormorant weighing from six to seven pounds. 

 What should we say of a man eating seventy or eighty 

 pounds of beef or mutton at his daily meals ? which he would 

 do were his appetite as great in proportion as that of the 

 Cormorant. The fact is, that, like most birds living on fish, 

 its digestion is extremely rapid, and it therefore requires a 

 proportionably larger supply of food, of which if it is deprived 

 it soon dies, as is often known to be the case. Thus, on the 

 western coast of the Hebrides, these poor birds suffer severely, 

 when, during and after a continued gale, the Atlantic rolls in 

 its enormous billows, dashing them against the headlands, 

 and scouring with their fury the sounds and creeks. As far 

 as the eye can reach, the ocean boils and heaves, presenting 

 one boundless field of foam, the spray from the summits of 

 the waves sweeping along the waste like drifted snow : no 

 sign of life is to be seen, save when a Gull, labouring hard 

 to bear itself up against the blast, hovers overhead, or darts 

 by like a meteor. If, at such a season, the haunts of the 



