250 The Zoologist — June, 1866. 



the bottom, and that he dives by chance. I have often seen the bird 

 dip the bill in the water and then shake the head. In confinement 

 I always found this was done to cleanse the bill of^Blime or any foreign 

 matter, such as its own down. 



Use of the peculiar Tail, the Hooked Bill and the Serrated Claw.— 

 The uses of the tail of this family are very imperfectly known, and yet 

 they cannot but be an object of conjecture to the ornithologist. 1 think 

 the following uses, which I have noted, may interest some, as they 

 never appeared in print before. The shag, being a ground-fisher, 

 requires, in deep water particularly, a strong perpendicular dive. Most 

 of the strong rocky coasts, about or in the vicinity of which shags are 

 only to be met with, are full of deep holes, and in such places fish are 

 more abundant ; consequently these holes are greatly fished about by 

 the shags. To accomplish these deep dives Nature has bestowed on 

 the shag and cormorant a beautiful instrument, in the long, stiff, fan-like 

 and limber-jointed tail. When diving, the bird, by a downward stroke 

 of the tail, lifts the body out of the water, the return jerk of the tail, 

 together with a stroke from the feet, turn it in the air (the whole action 

 representing a semicircle), thus giving it a head-foremost plunge. The 

 bird, when routing about the weeds and rocks at the bottom, generally 

 keeps the body perpendicular, that is, tail up ; it steadies itself in this 

 position by means of the extraonlinary tail. The bill is then thrust 

 sideways into the chinks and crevices of the rocks, to which its pecu- 

 liar food, wrasse, gobies, lashers, congers, &c., make for protection ; 

 the bill being used sideways can work in a much narrower crevice 

 than if used straight, and if I had not ocular proof of this side inser- 

 tion of the bill under stones, &c., to take out fish, the fact that most 

 fish taken from the throats of shags had the hole made by the hook of 

 the upper mandible of the bill in the side, would, I think, be sufficient 

 ^ to show that the fish are thus drawn from their holes, gaffed, as it were, 

 and then taken to the surface and swallowed.' So we see that the tail 

 and bill are uoi freaks of Nature, but organs of vital importance to the 

 shags. How any writer could stale that the shag and cormorant use 

 their tails as props while standing I cannot conceive, for such is quite 

 erroneous ; it is generally in the bird's way and trailed after it on land. 

 When perched on a narrow or small footing the tail is used to balance 

 the body. I should have slated before that, while at a great depth 

 under water, the shag must find it much easier to keep in a perpen- 

 dicular position than a horizontal one, as it cannot always succeed in 

 taking a fish from its hole the first dive, and often for many dives, as any 



