The stormy petrel during rough weather used to be a frequent visitor to the Perchee Channel, skimming just above the dark waves so close to the surface, as to appear to walk up a wave, rise above its crest, and then walk down into the valley of water on the opposite side.  I shot several specimens, two of which I stuffed, but they were both eaten by those horrid pigs.

Oyster-pickers were quite plentiful, and I quickly discovered that they might also aptly be termed limpet-pickers, for they seemed to take these shell fish as their staple food.  The modus operandi of feeding is to pounce down upon a rock which the receding tide has left bare, and with a single sharp blow with its beak, detach a limpet, and turning it mouth upward, pick out the fish at its leisure.  If it failed to detach the limpet at once it would go on to another, knowing that when once disturbed the limpet requires great force to detach it.  Oysters lie in deep waters where they are inaccessible to these birds, so whence is their name derived?

Then there were various kinds of divers, the principal of which class was the cormorant, greatly resembling a half-starved black swan, that is, it had a longer and thinner and less graceful body; but in many points it was superior to the swan, especially in its flying and diving powers, and in its quickness of action.  Its head appears never to be still, but constantly bobbing and turning from side to side, as if saying, “Did you ever catch a cormorant asleep?” Knowing that the Chinese train these birds to catch fish, I endeavoured to induce one to come to me, and serve his apprenticeship as a fisherman, but to no purpose.  It was just as well I could not catch one, for I find they must be trained from their young days to the art, as they are intractable in their grown-up wildness, and I was thus spared a great deal of unnecessary trouble and irritability of temper.

Although I had a store of simple medicines with me, I scarcely ever required to open the case.  Once and once only, I felt poorly for a whole week, but that I fancy was attributable to fruit and the heat.  Although not well, I thoroughly enjoyed a whole lazy week, most of which I spent by the side of my fish pool, studying the habits of my finny comrades in captivity.  Some of the rock fish became so tame that they would rise to the surface when I dropped crumbs of biscuits on the water, and I verily believe if I had had the patience, I might have taught them to feed from my fingers.  Sometimes for a treat I would bring “Flap” and place him near the water, and he seemed to enjoy looking at the denizens; but they were all too big for him to gobble, or he would have made an Aldermanic dinner of some of them.

I occasionally saw a snake, but always of the harmless, blindworm variety.  Of this species I caught two and admired them, but I did not make pets of them as I did of nearly everything else I could lay hands on.