

THE RANGE OF ANIMAL DIET 185 



readily to ordinary cattle-food. Seals were long con- 

 sidered to live wholly on fish. The supply is so varied 

 as well as abundant, and the seals so active, that it 

 might be thought that there was little to induce them 

 to seek a change. Yet Mr. Trevor-Battye when on 

 Kolguev watched a seal catching ducks with such per- 

 sistence and success that there can be little doubt that 

 the seal has extended its dietary from fish to fowl. 

 Instances of the converse are the great fishing owls, 

 which, being provided with an equipment equally suited 

 for killing birds and small animals, are by preference 

 catchers of fish. Instances of carnivora developing a 

 concurrent taste for vegetable food are uncommon. 

 The most curious instance the writer has known was 

 that of a Scotch deerhound, which was so fond of 

 peaches that it would stand on its hind-legs to pluck 

 those it could not reach when standing on all fours. 

 The Australian Colonies present the three most striking 

 instances of the tendency to extend the food-range in 

 the direction of flesh diet. The often-quoted case ot 

 the large New Zealand parrot which took to sheep- 

 killing is the most striking. But the feral pigs of the 

 Colony are said to be very destructive to young lambs, 

 and in 1833 in Australia throughout a large district the 

 sheep became not only carnivorous but cannibal. The 

 sheep of the Murrumbidgee country became addicted to 

 eating a salt-impregnated earth found on the runs, and 



