152 WILD SPORTS OF THE HIGHLANDS chap.- 



throat is also wonderfully great, and I have seen it severely 

 tested when the bird was engaged in swallowing a flounder 

 something wider than my hand. As the flounder went down, 

 the bird's throat was stretched out into a fan-like shape, as he 

 strained, apparently half- choked, to swallow it. These fish- 

 eating birds having no crop, all they gulp down, however large 

 it may be, goes at once into their stomach, where it is quickly 

 digested. Like the heron, the cormorant swallows young water- 

 fowl, rats, or anything that comes in its way. 



There is a peculiarity in J;he bills of most birds which live 

 on worms or fish : they are all more or less provided with a 

 kind of teeth, which, sloping inwards, admit easily of the 

 ingress of their prey, but make it impossible for anything to 

 escape after it has once entered. In the goosander and merg- 

 anser this is particularly conspicuous, as their teeth are so placed 

 that they hold their slippery prey with the greatest facility. The 

 common wild duck has it also, though the teeth are not nearly 

 so projecting or sharp ; feeding as it does on worms and insects, 

 it does not require to be so strongly armed in this respect as 

 those birds that live on fish. 



I wonder that it has never occurred to any one in this 

 country to follow the example of the Chinese in teaching the 

 cormorant to fish.^ The bold and voracious disposition of this 

 bird makes it easy enough to tame, and many of our lochs and 

 river-mouths would be well adapted for a trial of its abilities 

 in fishing ; and it would be an amusing variety in sporting to 

 watch the bird as he dived and pursued the fish in clear water. 

 We might take a hint from our brethren of the Celestial Empire 

 with some advantage in this respect. 



A curious anecdote of a brood of young wild ducks was 

 told me by my keeper to-day. He found in some very rough, 

 marshy ground, which was formerly a peat-moss, eight young 

 ducks nearly full grown, prisoners, as it were, in one of the old 

 peat-holes. They had evidently tumbled in some time before, 

 and had managed to subsist on the insects, etc., that it contained 

 or that fell into it. From the manner in which they had under- 

 mined the banks of their watery prison, the birds must have 

 been in it for sonie weeks. The sides were perpendicular, but 



' Since the author's time several have practised this mode of fishing with success in 

 England. 



