CHAP. XVI.} TEETH OF BIRDS, 133 
the cormorant, who, feeding on good-sized fish, is always seen 
diving in the large deep pools, where they are more likely to 
find trout big enough to satisfy their voracious appetite. ‘The 
throat of the cormorant stretches toa very great extent, and 
their mouth opens wide enough to swallow a good-sized sea- 
trout. Isaw a cormorant a few days ago engaged with a large 
white trout which he had caught in a quiet pool, and which he 
seemed to have some difficulty in swallowing. The bird was 
swimming with the fish across his bill, and endeavouring to get 
it in the right position, that is, with the head downwards. At 
last, by a dexterous jerk, he contrived to toss the trout up, and, 
catching it in his open mouth, managed to gulp it down, though 
apparently the fish was very much larger in circumference than 
the throat of the bird.. The expanding power of a heron’s 
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 the 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 merganser this is par- 
ticularly 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 pro- 
jecting 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 
