458 ON THE FEEDING OF YOUNG CORMORANTS. [June 6, 
surrounding the other flexor tendons. The flexor brevis hallucis, 
which is present, though small, is thus the only functional flexor of 
that digit. 
June 6, 1882. 
Prof. Flower, LL.D., F.R.S., President, in the Chair. 
The Secretary called attention to the curious way in which the 
young Cormorants, lately hatched in the Gardens, were fed by the 
parent bird, and exhibited a-drawing by Mrs. Hugh Blackburn, taken 
on the 9th ult., illustrating this subject. 
Two Cormorants deposited by Capt. Salvin in the autumn of 1881 
had paired in March last, and built a nest of sticks on a stump in 
the enclosure called the “Gull pond.” Two young ones were 
hatched on the 22nd April last, after four weeks’ incubation, both 
parents taking turns on the nest. The young birds were at first 
naked, but soon became covered with black down-plumage, whence 
they were now beginning to moult into their adult dress, 
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Cormorants and their young (from a drawing by Mrs. Hugh Blackburn). 
As would be seen by the illustration, the parents fed the young ones 
by allowing them to poke their heads far down into the parents’ 
throats and to extract the semidigested fish from the stomach. 
