THE CORMORANT. 
259 
appropriate remarks in a volume of essays entitled “ Holi¬ 
day Papers ” (p. 65). “ The great-crested grebe, or loon,” 
he says, “ is a giant compared to our little friend the dab- 
chick, and altogether makes a more respectable appear¬ 
ance, both in picture and pond. The habits and figure 
of the two birds, though, are much the same. There are 
numbers of loons on the ‘broads’ of Norfolk. Indeed it 
is in East Anglia that I have most especially watched the 
dabchick. These loons, like the lesser grebes, incubate 
and leave their eggs in the wet, and meet with the 
same ridiculous failure when they attempt to walk. 
Like them, they are capital divers, and begin from the 
egg-” 
Close to the divers in the natural system of birds come 
the cormorants, whose powers of swimming are in no way 
inferior to those of the species we have just named. 
They swim so low in the water that nothing but the 
head, neck, and top of the back appear above the surface. 
The tail, composed of stiff elastic feathers, is submerged 
and used as a rudder, and the wings as oars. The address 
with which they dive, and the rapidity of their movements, 
are wonderful; no less so than the pertinacity with which 
they pursue their prey. Voracious in the extreme,— 
“ Insatiate cormorant.” 
Richard II. Act ii. Sc. 1 ; 
they are unwearied and active fishers, following their prey 
