144 ANHINGA OR SNAKE-BIRD. 
broad, extending its throat, and compressing them during their descent | 
into the stomach. It did not appear to relish eels, as it eat all the 
other sorts first, and kept them to the last; and after having swallow- 
ed them, it had great difficulty in keeping them down, but, although for 
a while thwarted, it would renew its efforts, and at length master them. 
When taken to the tide-pond at the foot of my friend’s garden, it would 
now and then after diving return to the surface of the water with a 
cray-fish in its mouth, which it pressed hard and dashed about in its bill, 
evidently for the purpose of maiming it, before it would attempt to 
swallow it, and it never caught a fish without bringing it up to sub- 
ject it to the same operation. 
While residing near Bayou Sara, in the State of Mississippi, I was 
in the habit of occasionally visiting some acquaintances residing at 
Pointe Coupé, nearly opposite the mouth of the bayou. One day, on 
entering the house of an humble settler close on the western bank of 
the Mississippi, 1 observed two young Anhingas that had been taken 
out of a nest containing four, which had been built on a high cypress 
in alake on the eastern side of the river. They were perfectly tame 
and gentle, and much attached to their foster-parents, the man and 
woman of the house, whom they followed wherever they went. They 
fed with equal willingness on shrimps and fish, and when neither could 
be had, contented themselves with boiled Indian corn, of which they 
caught with great ease the grains as they were thrown one by one to 
them. I was afterwards informed, that when a year old, they were 
allowed to go to the river and fish for themselves, or to the ponds on 
either side, and that they regularly returned towards night for the pur- 
pose of roosting on the top of the house. Both birds were males, and. 
in time they fought hard battles, but at last each met with a female, 
which it enticed to the roost on the house-top, where all the four slept 
at night for a while. Soon after, the females having probably laid their 
eggs in the woods, they all disappeared, and were never again seen by 
the persons who related this curious affair. 
The Anhinga is shy and wary when residing in a densely peo- 
pled part of the country, which, however, is rarely the case, as I 
have already mentioned; but when in its favourite secluded and 
peaceful haunts, where it has seldom or never been molested, it is 
easily approached and without difficulty procured; nay, sometimes one 
will remain standing in the same spot and in the same posture, un- 
