SNAKE-BIRD. 375 
I doubt not but if this bird had been an inhabitant of the 
Tiber in Ovid’s days, it would have furnished him with a sub- 
ject for some beautiful and entertaining metamorphoses. I be- 
lieve they feed entirely on fish, for their flesh smells and tastes 
intolerably strong of it: it is scarcely to be eaten, unless one is 
constrained by insufferable hunger. They inhabit the waters of 
Cape Fear river, and, southerly, East and West Florida.* 
* Bartram’s Travels, p. 132. — MS, in the possession of the author.f 
t From Mr. Ord’s Supplementary Volume. 
voi. III. — 3 
