22 
always escape their attacks. They have 
been seen to make a pounce at a pigeon, 
and to kill it at a blow. They haunt the 
sea shores in search of dead fish, which 
may have been cast up by the tide, or 
throw n away by fishermen. Periwinkles, 
muscles, and the larger shell-fish, seem to 
be among their dainties; of which, as soon 
as this bird has found one, it flies up 
almost perpendicularly into the air, with 
the fish in its beak, and there lets it fall 
oft the stones, in order to break its shell. 
The bird quickly follows the falling booty, 
and devours it at its leisure. 
The same Tnethod of procuring food, is 
practised by other birds of this genus. 
The following anecdote related by 
Montagu, proves a most astonishing in- 
stinctive faculty in the Crow, "We ob- 
served, (says he) two Crows by the sea 
shore, busy in removing some small fish 
(the refuse of a fisherman's net) from the 
edge of the flowing tide, and conveying 
them one by one beyond the usual flux of 
the tide, of just above high water mark, 
