228 BIRD LIFE IN ENGLAND. 



laugh then we can only suggest they are more conventional 

 than we are and less easily pleased. 



The green-eyed cormorants are familiar objects of the 

 coast, either flapping with undeviating integrity of purpose 

 just above the water across the harbour mouth, or " hanging 

 themselves out to dry " on the warm rocks after a successful 

 foray. A well-wisher of theirs puts in a kind word for them. 



" Nor from another standpoint can the cormorant be re- 

 garded as injurious. I do not refer to any qualities which 

 might touch the heartstrings of the aesthetic or sentimental, 

 which vibrate so plaintively for the captive goldfinch or the 

 tender pigeon's wrongs, for this is only a black, ungainly 

 fowl, albeit beloved by Njord of Northern lore a patient, 

 clever fisher, but of what? Often I have watched the cor- 

 morant fill its pouch before taking its nine-mile heavy flight 

 to its young on the cliffs of Budleigh Salterton, where, mid- 

 way between the sea and heather, it breeds unmolested among 

 grey, samphire-covered rocks, or ledges of red sand, and seen 

 in nearly every instance its prey has been the flat fish or the 

 eel, than which no greater enemy exists to salmon spawn and 

 fry." And, further, what cormorant can compare in destructive 

 capacity with the greedy fisherman, or poacher, who kills the 

 salmon big with spawn for an uneasy meal or shameful 

 market ? In truth, the Phalacocorax carlo, as Temminck has 

 it, has not alone the right to a name distinctive from the 

 earliest days of rapacity and greed. 



In Devonshire, we are informed, the responsible authorities 

 silently proclaim their opinion of this great ungainly sea-crow 

 by withholding protection from him all the year round. In 

 China and Ceylon he is a professional fisher working from a 

 boat's prow, with a strap round his neck, industriously and 

 successfully. Except perhaps in the breeding season, when 

 he, like all other animate life, has given hostages to fortune 

 and increases his kind at his own imminent peril, the cor- 

 morant is very well able to take care of himself. 



The sea birds have their protective legislation, and I am 



