6 



CORMORANT. 



family. The enormous pouch which decorates 

 the lower bill of the white pelican is only rudi- 

 mentary in our British pelicans, probably because 

 there would be no use for it, as the birds live on 

 or close to the coast. 



The other English pelicans are the Gannet, a 

 figure of which will be given shortly, and the 

 Common Shag, a bird of a monosyllabic English 

 cognomen, but who ought to consider himself 

 recompensed by the scientific name given to him 

 by certain naturalists, namely, Phalacrocorax 

 cristatus; the epithet cristatus, or crested, being 

 due to a tuft of reverted green feathers that 

 decorates the head. This tuft, however, is only 

 worn during the breeding season, when most 

 animals put on their gayest apparel, and is lost 

 as soon as the young Phalacrocoraces cristati take 

 their places as independent members of society. 



The cormorant is a persevering fisher, in- 

 satiable in appetite, and almost unparalleled in 

 digestion. The pike and the shark among fish 

 appear to possess much the same proportionate 

 digestive power as the cormorant among birds. 

 The cormorant is not content with sitting, like 

 the heron, on the edge of the water, and snapping 

 up the fish that may enter the shallows ; or even, 

 like the gulls, with seizing them from the surface 



