The Shear-Water.] OF ORKNEY. 



likewise take the old ones in March, but these are poor, and 

 not near so good as the young. 



An old lyre weighs seventeen ounces ; in length eighteen 

 inches ; breadth twenty-six ; the bill is about an inch and a 

 half long ; the upper mandible black, the lower lead-colour- 

 ed ; the nostrils are placed very near one another in a bald 

 skin of the upper part of the bill, they are small and round ; 

 the body is long and cylindrical ; the back and whole upper 

 side black ; the throat, breast, and belly white ; the feet are 

 placed very far back ; the leg bones thin, the colour various, 

 in some greenish and black, in others white before and black 

 behind. 



There are various accounts of the manner of feeding of this 

 bird ; however, the make of its bill, I should think, pronoun- 

 ces it a fisher, and in the stomach of one I dissected I found 

 a piece of a fish, surrounded with a greenish liquor, but so 

 much decayed that I could not make out what kind it was. 

 Our country people say it scums the water, and lives on the oil 

 it finds there ; but the form of its bill denies that. The last no- 

 tion is from its spouting a quantity of oil from its throat; but 

 this is not peculiar to it, but to the whole genus, and is its food 

 reduced to this in its stomach. 



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