THE ROD IN SALT WATER 411 



book. The puffin may be recognised from the rest by 

 its parrot-like beak, which, in the courting days, assumes 

 half the colours of the solar spectrum. They are all 

 divers, except the shearwaters, which fly in great curves 

 over the sea and never seem to rest. That they remain 

 so plentiful is remarkable, as they lay only a single egg, 

 but they are careful to lay it on an inaccessible ledge 

 in the cliffs, and, after all, few people shoot them. The 

 only other little bird in the sea-fisherman's visiting-list 

 is the least of the petrels, the little white fellow known 

 as Mother Carey's Chicken (who Mother Carey was, 

 I have not the faintest notion), or the Stormy Petrel, 

 and generally recognised by sailors as the forerunner 

 of bad weather at sea. 



Sooner or later the fisherman with a turn for natural 

 history is sure to be attracted by those marine mammals, 

 which we term variously whales, porpoises, and dolphins. 

 Of seals, which are carnivorous animals of a higher 

 order, he may also see something, particularly in the 

 sea lochs of the west coast. I recollect watching one 

 basking on a flat rock in Loch Etive. But they have 

 practically vanished from southern England, and are 

 no longer seen, save at long intervals, even in the 

 wilder scenery of Cornwall and its island satellites, 

 where they once were numerous. The whales and 

 porpoises, on the other hand, are encountered all round 

 these islands. Great herds of the larger whales are 

 uncommon south of Orkney and Shetland, but I have 

 seen the grampus fishing close to land, rushing through 



