ON SOME SO-CALLED FISH-EATING BIRDS. 463 



attention, and suggested the remarks which follow, and which are 

 here offered in the hope that they will help to remove some of 

 the misapprehension which prevails concerning the food of our 

 aquatic birds. This seems the more desirable since most of the 

 birds which are exhibited have been seen by thousands for the 

 first time ; I allude particularly to those of the working classes 

 who have thronged the Exhibition. 



Let me therefore first notice as briefly as possible those fish- 

 eating birds about whose scaly diet there is no possible doubt ; 

 and secondly, more fully, those birds which, though exhibited as 

 " fish-eating birds," are not in my humble opinion of piscivorous 

 habits, and which for this reason ought not to have been exhibited 

 with the others. Among the fish-eating birds, properly so called, 

 are some exceedingly good specimens of the Fish Hawk or Osprey; 

 Herons in numbers, two of which I noticed stuffed as if killed by 

 an eel tightly twisted in a knot round the neck — an apt illustration 

 of the biter bit. Kingfishers in abundance seemed to have more 

 attractions for most people than any other bird in the collection. 

 A Night Heron is labelled in the catalogue as "very rare," 

 although a White Stork, Egret, and Spoonbill seem not to have 

 been deemed worthy of such distinction. 



An excellent collection of Gulls, Grebes, and Divers (in many 

 instances beautifully preserved and set up, especially the young of 

 the Common Coot) is especially worthy of notice. Why the Darter 

 (Plotus anhinga) should have been exhibited in a British collection 

 I am at a loss to imagine, it being a native of America which has 

 never yet found its way to this country. Perhaps one of the most 

 striking cases in the Exhibition is a pair of Lesser Terns, Sterna 

 minuta, beautifully stuffed by Mi-. T. E. Gunn, of Norwich, one 

 bird hovering over its eggs in the sand, arranged correctly in their 

 so-called nest with the four pointed ends together; the other bird 

 dead by its nest with the blood on its breast, having evidently been 

 shot, affording an admirable illustration of the necessity of pro- 

 tecting by legislation our sea-birds during the breeding-season, 

 the Cormorant and Great Black-backed Gull perhaps alone 

 excepted. Passing by numerous waders which are classed as 

 " fish-eating birds," such as the Greenshank, Bedshank, Godwit, 

 Stints, and Plovers of various kinds, but which properly speaking 

 can hardly be so designated, though I may give them the benefit 

 of the doubt since on the sea-shore their food probably consists 



