ORNITHOLOGICAL RAMBLES. 109 



distance, they must have cleared him in a harmless 

 manner. Joseph tells me that, on one occasion, when 

 shooting at a greater black-backed gull, the cartridge 

 so completely " balled " as to cause a large perforation 

 entirely through the body of the bird. 



In its fully-developed plumage, an old or adult 

 cormorant possesses a beautiful white thigh or tibial 

 feather, and I naturally spared no pains to obtain one 

 with this appendage. 



I was almost ceasing in despair, when one of my 

 shots told at an immense distance, breaking the large 

 joint of the wing, and the ponderous fellow, spinning 

 round and round, descended with a fearful velocity, and 

 as with a shout from the boat he entered the deep 

 water with a plunge, a fan-shaped mist ascended, and 

 then, after a few seconds had elapsed, he rose like a 

 log to the surface, I stepped out and clambered on to 

 the rough sloping back of an enormous insulated 

 boulder, on which many a noble ship has ere this 

 " come to grief," covered on every side with a rank and 

 slippery growth of pendulous sea-w r eed, interspersed 

 with millions of limpets, and around which the gentle 

 swell was rising and falling, and, upon this, as inclining 

 from the craig, I lay flat upon my face. Then, using 

 its topmost edge as a rest for my rifle, I in this manner 

 fired some twenty balls, most of them at one particular 

 bird. Her head and upper portion of the neck I could 

 alone perceive. She shook or drew back every now 



