THE DOUBLE-CRESTED CORMORANT. 
11 
had been fishing for at least an hour and a half, but its crop as 
well as those of the other two mentioned were empty. The 
rarity of the species in river waters shows that these accidental 
occurrences before cited must be disregarded in considering the 
economic damage done by cormorants to salmon. 
With the exception, then, of a few wandering birds, the cor- 
morants feed either along the sea coast as at Perc6 or in the tidal 
mouths of the rivers. We collected some thirty stomachs from 
such localities, but none of them contained salmonoid remains. 
The food contents were mostly capelin, flounder, herring, and an 
occasional eel and tom cod. See table of stomach contents, 
page 15. 
Of the thirty- two stomachs examined, five were empty, 
one so nearly so as to make the contents unrecognizable, and 
two were from nestlings with contents regurgitated from the 
parents throat, and, having been subject to double digestive 
action, were not recognizable. 
Of the remaining twenty-five, sixteen contained sculpins; 
five herring; one each capelin and eel; and two tom cod or 
allied fish. Nearly all had ascaris and other parasitical remains. 
The evidence indicates that these were incidentally obtained 
from the flesh of the original hosts. In many stomachs there 
were fragments of eel-grass, crustaceans, molluscs, and pebbles, 
but in small quantities and evidently derived from the stomachs 
of the prey or taken accidentally with it. 
It will be seen from this that the cormorants in the tidal 
mouths, at least during the season of our work, July and August, 
do little, if any, appreciable damage to the salmon. It yet 
remains to be proved that they are equally harmless at other 
seasons though, as will be shown from later considerations, the 
onus of the proof rests with the prosecution. 
On the coast, about Perc6, the cormorants certainly do the 
fishermen a certain amount of injury. It is not the salmon in- 
dustries that are affected here but the cod-fishing. During a 
large part of the season the codfishers rely altogether upon her- 
ring for bait and for this purpose the herring nets are set nightly. 
When these fish are abundant the toll taken by cormorants is not 
noticeable, but when, as regularly occurs, herring are scarce, 
