294 
£é 
GANNET CORVORANT. Cuass I. 
Chandour, near Mount-bay, Sept. 30, 1762, 
after a long struggle with a water spaniel, 
assisted by the boatmen; for it was strong 
and pugnacious. The person who took it 
observed that it had a transparent membrane 
under the eye-lid, with which it covered at 
pleasure the whole eye, without obscuring — 
the sight or shutting the eye-lid; a gracious 
provision for the security of the eyes of so 
weighty a creature, whose method of taking 
its prey is by darting headlong on it from a 
height of a hundred and fifty feet or more 
into the water. About four years ago, one 
of these birds flying over Penzance, (a thing 
that rarely happens) and seeing some pil- 
chards lying on a fir-plank, in a cellar used 
for curing fish, darted itself down with such 
violence, that it struck its bill quite through 
the board (about an inch and a quarter thick) 
and broke its neck.” 
These birds are sometimes taken at sea by a 
deception of the like kind. The fishermen 
fasten a pilchard to a board, and leave it float- 
ing; which inviting bait decoys the unwary 
Gannet to its own destruction. 
In the Cataracta of Juba* may be found 
* Plinii, lib. x. c. 44. 
