The Zoologist— Jan uauv, 1869. 1509 



(livers that I have seen — in fact, totally difFereut in propovlion and 

 strength. 



Cormorant. — The Cormorants of Dublin Bay. — February 20. 

 1 never remember to have seen more cormorants in the Bay than this 

 spring: great numbers appear to be adults, and are fully plumed with 

 white, both on thigh and neck. They are excessively difficult to 

 procure in this jjlumage about here, and, wild-fowler as I am, I was 

 well pleased to shoot one of these patriarchs to-day. The plumage at 

 this season undergoes a great change from that of winter, in addition 

 to the white gorget and thigh-patch, the black mane and the white 

 plumes on the neck, it thickens, glossens and becomes very rich in 

 metallic lustre. Certainly they are beautiful birds, and shame be to 

 him who maligns them. The channel of our River Liffey is marked 

 by quaint structures of wood and stone, surmounted by a ball. 

 Calmly on these balls our friends the cormorants sit, benignly gazing 

 on the traffic beneath, while they stretch their sombre wings to dry, or 

 pick and clean their plumage. They are desperate rogues, though, 

 and "know if a gun is in a boat as well as a Christian." Whether 

 Christians have a natural dread of fire-arms or not I cannot say, but 

 cormorants that have no fear of peaceful traffic, at once, "ske- 

 daddle" on the approach of an armed boat. Again, lower down 

 old Anna Liffey, we have the Bull Wall, a pier of rough blocks of 

 limestone — a noble break to keep the sand from our river, a large 

 portion of which (the wall) is tidal, and its position marked for high 

 water by posts. These sign-posts are mere fir-poles, with four sticks 

 forming a skeleton square or rhomboid, nailed across the top, — in a few 

 instances the carpenter has been more liberal with his sticks, — the 

 whole bedded in the blocks of limestone. Certain storms have 

 loosened some of these posts, permitting them to swing as the tide 

 washes them ; others have got a " cant," as the saying is, and seem as 

 if put up to mark the road to ruin, or to Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress, 

 or some such odd place — so bleached and time-worn do they appear : 

 in fact, on their old scaly faces, chalked with cormorant lime, 1 have 

 in fancy read the very words to " ruin and to waste," " Charles 

 Dickens," &c., and by night have traced the dark pictures of Hablot 

 K. Browne. Grimly as they look by day, more grimly far by night, as 

 the sand bull roars, and the wind shrieks through their gibbet-like 

 tops. Ah, me ! many the pleasant day and night spent amongst 

 them. But 1 am forgetting the cormorants all this time. Well, here 

 they rust and here they roost, on these old poles, by day and night, 



