112 THE OCEAN. 



to consume twenty-two thousand of the young birds 

 every year, besides eggs. They are powerful birds 

 upon the wing, and pursue with much eagerness the 

 shoals of herrings and pilchards, on which they 

 pounce with the perpendicular descent of a stone. 

 Buchanan conjectures that the Gannets destroy 

 more than one hundred millions of herrings an- 

 nually. In flying over Penzance some years since, 

 a Gannet's attention was arrested by a fish lying on 

 a board. According to custom, down he swooped 

 on the prey ; but his imprudence cost him his life ; 

 and it was found that from the impetus of his de- 

 scent, the bill had quite transfixed the board, though 

 an inch and a quarter in thickness. The fishermen 

 take advantage of this habit, to allure the bird to 

 its destruction; for they fix a fresh herring to a 

 board, and draw it after a sailing boat with some 

 rapidity through the waves; by which many are 

 killed in the manner just narrated. The apparatus 

 by which this bird is furnished for its aerial powers, 

 as well as for aiding its arrowy descent, is very beau- 

 tiful and instructive. Professor Owen, by inserting 

 a tube into the windpipe, was enabled to inflate the 

 whole body with air, and found that air-cells com- 

 municating with each other, pervaded every part, 

 separating even the muscles from each other, and 

 isolating the very vessels and nerves ; and penetrat- 

 ing the bones of the wing. A large air-cell was 

 found to be placed in front of the forked-bone, or 

 clavicles, which was furnished with muscles, whose 

 action was instantaneously to expel the air, and thus 

 in a moment to deprive the bird of that buoyancy, 



