COMMON GANNET. 
207 
soundings, but rarely young ones, they generally keeping much nearer to 
the shores, and procuring their food in shallower water. 
The flight of the Gannet is powerful, well sustained, and at times ex- 
tremely elegant. While travelling, whether in fine or foul weather, they 
fly low over the surface of the water, flapping their wings thirty or forty 
times in succession, in the manner of the Ibis and the Brown Pelican, and 
then sailing about an equal distance, with the wings at right angles to the 
body, and the neck extended forwards. But, reader, to judge of the ele- 
gance of this bird while on wing, I would advise you to gaze on it from the 
deck of any of our packet ships, when her commander has first communi- 
cated the joyful news that you are less than three hundred miles from the 
nearest shore, whether it be that of merry England or of my own beloved 
country. You would then see the powerful fisher, on well-spread pinions, 
and high over the water, glide silently along, surveying each swelling wave 
below, and coursing with so much ease and buoyancy as to tempt you to 
think that had you been furnished with equal powers of flight, you might 
perform a journey of eighty or ninety miles without the slightest fatigue in 
a single hour. But perhaps at the very moment when these thoughts have 
crossed your mind, as they many times have crossed mine on such occasions, 
they are suddenly checked by the action of the bird, which, intent on filling 
its empty stomach, and heedless of your fancies, plunges headlong through 
the air, with the speed of a meteor, and instantaneously snatches the fish 
which its keen sight had discovered from on high. Now perchance you 
may see the snow-white bird sit buoyantly for awhile on the bosom of its 
beloved element, either munching its prey, or swallowing it at once. Or 
perhaps, if disappointed in its attempt, you will see it rise by continued 
flappings, shaking its tail sideways the while, and snugly covering its broad 
webbed feet among the under coverts of that useful rudder, after which it 
proceeds in a straight course, until its wings being well supplied by the 
flowing air, it gradually ascends to its former height, and commences its 
search anew. 
In severe windy weather, I have seen the Gannet propelling itself against 
the gale by sweeps of considerable extent, placing its body almost sideways 
or obliquely, and thus alternately, in the manner of Petrels and Guillemots ; 
and I have thought that the bird then moved with more velocity than at any 
other time, except when plunging after its prey. Persons who have seen 
it while engaged in procuring food, must, like myself, have been surprised 
when they have read in books that Gannets “ are never known to dive,” and 
yet are assured that they “ have been taken by a fish fastened to a board sunk 
to the depth of two fathoms, in which case the neck has either been found 
dislocated, or the bill firmly fixed in the wood.” With such statements 
