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POPULAR HISTORY OF BIRDS. 
Mr. Vf aterton has devoted one of his lively essays to the 
haunts and habits of the cormorant. He justly describes 
him as the feathered terror of the finny tribe ; his skill in 
diving is most admirable^ and his success beyond belief. 
You may know him at a distance among a thousand water- 
fowl^ by his upright neck^ by his body being apparently half 
immersed in the water^ and by his being perpetually in 
motion when not on land. . . . First raising his body nearly 
perpendicular^ down he plunges into the deep ; and^ after 
staying there a considerable time^ he is sure to bring up a 
fishj which he invariably swallows head foremost. Sometimes 
half an hour elapses before he can manage to accommodate 
a large eel quietly in his stomach. You see him straining 
violently, with repeated efforts to gulp it ; and^ when you 
fancy that the shppery mouthful is successfully disposed of, 
all of a sudden the eel retrogrades upwards from its dismal 
sepulchre, struggling violently to escape. The cormorant 
swallows it again; and up again it comes, and shows its 
tail a foot or more out of its destroyer^s mouth. At length, 
worn out with ineffectual writhings and slidings, the eel is 
gulped down into the cormorant^s stomach for the last time, 
there to meet its dreaded and inevitable fate"^.''^ 
* "Waterton, ' Essays on Natural History,' p. 161. 
