PHALACROCOEAX CAEBO. 1189 



salted food. Sometimes, also, when he saw a boy coming to the house with fish he would waylay him, and, if 

 no contributions were then offered, he would speedily settle the matter by helping himself. One day, when 

 food was scarce and he had been fasting for many hours, I happened to pass by carrying a number of 

 Starlings, one of which I tossed at him, but scarcely with the expectation that it would be accepted. However, 

 he caught it cleverly before it could reach the ground, and the next instant it disappeared down his capacious 

 throat. Another followed, and was treated in the same way; then more, until no less than five had been 

 thus disposed of. This number seemed to satisfy him ; and, the whole neck being enormously distended, it 

 was with difficulty that he waddled away to his favourite corner of the coal-shed, where I left him sitting, face 

 to the wall, upon a lump of coal, the legs of the last Starling still projecting from the corner of his mouth. 

 After this a bird was always a favourite morsel, and he would follow me for a long distance when I happened 

 to be carrying a gun. Once I gave him, for a single meal, two Buntings, a Twite, a Sparrow, two Snow- 

 Buntings, and a Ringed Plover ; and even then he followed me for more. Birds, fish, and mice were always 

 swallowed head foremost. During the first two years he kept almost entirely to the ground, only occasionally 

 sitting upon a stone or low wall ; but afterwards the roof of the house was preferred, from which elevated 

 position he used suddenly to pounce down, either to rob a fish-basket or to scatter a company of feeding Ducks. 

 But this was merely as a diversion, not as a necessity ; for from the time of his first taking up his position on 

 the roof he also began regularly to procure his own meals, flying to the voe for that purpose, and after 

 remaining there for an hour or two, returning to his former station by the chimney." 



Nidification. — In India the Cormorant nests frequently in trees growing in inaccessible swamps and jheels ; 

 but in temperate climates generally resorts to high cliffs or rock-bound shores, where it is safe from the attacks 

 made upon its eggs and young. Mr. Hume has been informed that it breeds on rocks in the river Jumna 

 near Allahabad, and also on the Chumbul near Etawah. Mr. Oates, however, gives us an authentic account of 

 a vast breeding -place in the great Myitkyo swamp in Burmah, where it nests in " low, apparently dead, trees 

 which rear their heads 15 or 20 feet above the water." He was unable to reach the trees himself, and sent a 

 native to procure the eggs. "At a short distance the nests," he remarks, "appeared to be made of twigs; 

 but I have often seen these birds dive in the canal aud fly off with weeds fully 5 feet long. These no doubt 

 enter into the composition of the nest." The eggs were taken on the 4th of October ; but he observed birds 

 carrying sticks and weeds up to the 27th of that month. His specimens measured 23 to 2'6 inches in length 

 and 1*5 to V7 in breadth. 



In parts of Europe this bird breeds on trees ; and an account of a very large colony, situated on an island 

 in the Klossowski lake (North Posen), is given by Mr. Dresser from the letter of a correspondent, Dr. Kutter. 

 Here about 400 pairs breed in lofty fir and oak trees in company with about 200 pairs of Herons. A 

 description of a large breeding-place at the Samara-Dhund swamp in the Eastern Narra district, where the 

 nests are all placed on trees only 4 or 5 feet above the water, is also given by Mr. Doig, C.E., in ' Stray Feathers/ 

 1878, p. 468. The nests were large platforms of sticks, the eggs being laid on a thin bedding of grass. In 

 one nest there were as many as seven eggs. In Denmark, as has been already stated, it used to breed in the 

 forests near the sea, and about a dozen localities are cited by Mr. Collin from which it has now been driven. 

 Finally, there was, in former centuries, the breeding-place at Reedham above alluded to. Now it is known to 

 breed only on sea-cliffs, on rocks and precipices, on the borders of lakes in Scotland, or on crags near the 

 coast, as in Wales. The most celebrated breeding-place in the latter country is that known as Craig y dern 

 (the "Bird-rock"), in Merionethshire, which, through the kindness of the owner of the estate, Major Stewart, 

 of Shrewsbury, I was enabled this year to visit. The " Bird-rock " is one of the buttresses which flank the 

 south side of a pretty valley running up from Towyn to the sides of Cader Idris, and is situated about seven miles 

 from the sea. A walk of two miles and a half across the flat country near Towyn, past the gates of the fine old 

 seat, Ynys Moengwyn, brings the pedestrian to the foot of the hill which divides the two valleys intersecting 

 this part of the country ; and after bearing to the left, the road leads along the slope of the dividing range, 

 and the breeding-place of the Cormorants opens out. It is a bold crag of trappean rock with two faces, the 

 western tumbling down to the fields below in lumpy masses and steep grass- and bracken-slopes, the northern 

 a sheer precipice of 300 feet, supported by a grand slope of fallen rock and earth about 400 feet in height. A 

 few Cormorants were seen wending their way in from seawards high above our heads, and now and then one 



