LEOPARD SHARK.
LEOPARD SHARK.
and strong again, and the gap in his pouch had to all appearance healed.
There is an island just off the coast measuring scarce one hundred yards in any direction, and thereon stands a pelicans’ rookery. There these great confiding, prehistoric-looking, silly birds used to gather until they were all but shot out by plume-hunters at 25 cents. the skin. And here, in the highest trees, some of the great birds still congregate, their curious webbed feet looking most incongruous as they grasp the swaying branches. The neighbouring island, somewhat larger in extent, is the home of innumerable cormorants and herons, both blue and white, all nesting in the tall black mangroves, and so tame that you may approach to within six yards of the little blue herons. Yet on all sides are the tiny corpses of deserted little birds, their parents in the breeding plumage ruthlessly shot down to deck women’s hats! The thin end of the wedge of bird protection has, it is true, been inserted, but the law is almost inoperative in these out-of-the-way regions, and the slaughter proceeds unchecked. And so the beautiful American woodlands are being denuded of their unrivalled bird life in order that every mistress and every maid may dangle “osprey” plumes over their heads.
With my pictures, then, end my notes, and I am only too conscious of their meagreness. My object, however, was, as I may have said already, to put before intending visitors to Florida—and tarpon fishing must gain a wider public before long—some of the chief fish that they are likely to meet with in those waters.
Two curious facts that I find in my diaries seem worth setting down in conclusion. One is that dogs cannot live long in that climate. They succumb within four years to a disease that has hitherto been a complete mystery. A local doctor has, however, isolated the microbe responsible for the mischief.