After about twenty minutes she brought back a black duck-like bird with a tuft on his head.
"This cormorant, Doctor," said she, "fished up that pile of oysters."
"Ah," said John Dolittle, "perhaps we shall find out something now. Can you tell me," he asked the cormorant, "how to get pearls?"
"Pearls? What do you mean?" said the bird.
Then Dab-Dab went and borrowed the playthings from the spoonbill's children to show him.
"Oh, those things," said the cormorant. "Those come in bad oysters. When I go oyster fishing I never pick up that kind except once in a while by accident—and then I never bother to open them."
"But how do you tell oysters of that kind from the others?" asked the Doctor.
"By sniffing them," said the cormorant. "The ones that have those things in them don't smell fresh. I'm frightfully particular about my oysters."
"Do you mean to say that even when you are right down under the water you could tell an oyster that had pearls in it from one that hadn't—just by sniffing it?"
"Certainly. So could any cormorant."