The Zoologist — August, 1866. 331 



often proved, and very rare and interesting pets they make, if plenty 

 of room and water be given them, with a free use of their wings and 

 an abundance of fresh fish. I have kept many shags and cormorants, 

 but have too often been obliged to set them at liberty during spring, 

 on account of the great difficulty in obtaining fish: for weeks here, in 

 spring and winter, we dare not go to sea. Any that I have kept have 

 been taken from the sea, and never from the nest, most generally by a 

 slight wound in the head ; two were from the throats of the angler 

 {Lophius piscaloriiis) . Last winter I kept five; one got drowned, 

 three died from being fed on bad fish, and one only remains with me 

 now. One of those that died was a most interesting bird — a female, 

 though, notwithstanding its sex, christened " Dick" by my butler (who, 

 by the bye, is an original Irishman, a bit of a Micky Free, and as fond 

 of birds as his master). Well, poor Dick first came to know this 

 character by a grain of his No. 2 shot passing through one eye and 

 out of the other. Though his tears could not cure or alleviate the 

 poor thing's sufferings, still his unremitting future kindness, and a little 

 of my healing art, did in the end totally restore Dick to health, but 

 never to sight. For four days she never moved from a standing 

 posture on a " crab cleave," with the bill buried in the feathers of the 

 back. At the end of the fourth day we forced a herring down her 

 throat, and from that out two a day ; on the sixth day she showed no 

 more affectation, but took the fish herself, and from that out Dick was 

 a tamed bird. "Very soon, too, Dick came to know her name, and a 

 " Come, Dick," would rouse all her energies, and she would come 

 direct to the voice, even feeling her way round corners by her bill, as 

 a blind man would with a stick. When at your leg she would gently 

 pull your trousers, as if fancying you were blind too, and did not know 

 that she was beside you. Soon the human voice became music to 

 Dick, and from the yard she would grope her way into the kitchen, to 

 the fire, where the women would be talking, and stand on one leg 

 before the genial blaze or extend her wings to it. All her actions 

 were directed by the bill, and, as I said before, it acted like a blind 

 man's staff to her. She could find her way to her pond in the 

 morning, and wash in it, or grope about in it for pieces of fish, which 

 when the bird touched she knew from anything else. So sensitive is 

 the feeling power of the bill that pieces of fish were never swallowed 

 against the scales, but invariably turned in it by a succession of small 

 catches. This lasted for a time, but, like all pets, female Dick died, 

 after a feed of stale conger. Other birds with sight became equally 



