﻿EXTERNAL ANATOMY. BILL OF HHYNCHOFS. 73 



sition. To prevent inconvenience from the rushing of 

 the water, the mouth is confined to the mere opening 

 of the gullet, which, indeed, prevents mastication taking 

 place there ; but the stomach, or gizzard, to which this 

 business is solely allotted, is of uncommon hardness, 

 strength, and muscularity, far surpassing in these re- 

 spects any other water-bird with which I am acquainted. 

 To all these is added a vast expansion of wing, to enable 

 the bird to sail with sufficient celerity while dipping in 

 the water. The general proportion of the wing of our 

 swiftest hawks and swallows to their breadth, is as one 

 to two ; but in the present case, as there is not only the 

 resistance of the air, but also that of the water, to over- 

 come, a still greater volume of wing is given, the sheer- 

 water measuring nineteen inches in length and upwards 

 of forty-four in extent. In short, whoever has atten- 

 tively examined this curious apparatus, and observed 

 the possessor, with his ample wings, long, bending neck, 

 and lower mandible, occasionally dipt into and ploughing 

 the surface, and the facility with which he procures his 

 food, cannot but consider it a mere playful amusement, 

 when compared with the dashing immersions of the 

 tern, the gull, or the fish-hawk, who, to the superficial 

 observer, appear so superiorly accommodated. The 

 sheerwater is most frequently seen skimming close along 

 shore, about the first of the flood. — I have observed 

 eight or ten in company, passing and repassing at high 

 water, dipping, with extended neck, their open bills 

 into the water, with as much apparent ease as swallows 

 glean up flies." We have now enumerated the most 

 remarkable of those forms with which nature has diver- 

 sified the bill of birds : but these forms, again, are 

 varied and combined in such a multitude of ways, that 

 it would be useless, if not impossible, to attempt further 

 definitions. Some systematists, however, have chosen to 

 make these variations the ground-work of their systems, 

 to the utter confusion of all natural arrangement, and 

 the no small perplexity of the student. Upon this prin- 

 ciple the falcons must come next the parrots ; the fly- 



