Once, while descending the Mississippi, in a sluggish flat-bottomed boat, expressly for the purpose of studying those objects of nature more nearly connected with my favourite pursuits, I chanced to meet with two well-grown Opossums, and brought them alive to the “ark.” The poor things were placed on the roof or deck, and were immediately assailed by the crew, when, following their natural instinct, they lay as if quite dead. An experiment was suggested, and both were thrown overboard. On striking the water, and for a few moments after, neither evinced the least disposition to move; but finding their situation desperate, they began to swim towards our uncouth rudder, which was formed of a long slender tree, extending from the middle of the boat thirty feet beyond its stern. They both got upon it, were taken up, and afterwards let loose in their native woods.
In the year 1829, I was in a portion of Lower Louisiana, where the Opossum abounds at all seasons, and having been asked by the President and the Secretary of the Zoological Society of London, to forward live animals of this species to them, I offered a price a little above the common, and soon found myself plentifully supplied, twenty-five having been brought to me. I found them excessively voracious, and not less cowardly. They were put into a large box, with a great quantity of food, and conveyed to a steamer bound for New Orleans. Two days afterwards, I went to the city, to see about sending them off to Europe; but, to my surprise, I found that the old males had destroyed the younger ones, and eaten off their heads, and that only sixteen remained alive. A separate box was purchased for each, and some time after they reached my friends the Rathbones of Liverpool, who, with their usual attention, sent them off to London, where, on my return, I saw a good number of them in the Zoological Gardens.
This animal is fond of grapes, of which a species now bears its name. Persimons are greedily eaten by it, and in severe weather I have observed it eating lichens. Fowls of every kind, and quadrupeds less powerful than itself, are also its habitual prey.
The flesh of the Opossum resembles that of a young pig, and would perhaps be as highly prized, were it not for the prejudice generally entertained against it. Some “very particular” persons, to my knowledge, have pronounced it excellent eating. After cleaning its body, suspend it for a whole week in the frosty air, for it is not eaten in summer; then place it on a heap of hot wood embers; sprinkle it when cooked with gunpowder; and now tell me, good reader, does it not equal the famed Canvas-back Duck? Should you visit any of our markets, you may see it there in company with the best game.
THE COMMON CORMORANT.
Phalacrocorax Carbo, Dumont.
PLATE CCLXVI. Male, Female, and Young.
Look at the birds before you, and mark the affectionate glance of the mother, as she stands beside her beloved younglings! I wish you could have witnessed the actions of such groups as I did while in Labrador. Methinks I still see the high rolling billows of the St Lawrence breaking in foaming masses against the huge cliffs, on the shelves of which the Cormorant places its nest. I lie flat on the edge of the precipice some hundred feet above the turbulent waters, and now crawling along with all care, I find myself only a few yards above the spot on which the parent bird and her young are fondling each other, quite unconscious of my being near. How delighted I am to witness their affectionate gratulations, hear their lisping notes, mark the tremulous motions of their expanded throats, and the curious vacillations of their heads and necks! The kind mother gently caresses each alternately with her bill; the little ones draw nearer to her, and, as if anxious to evince their gratitude, rub their heads against hers. How pleasing all this is to me! But at this moment the mother accidentally looks upward, her keen eye has met mine, she utters a croak, spreads her sable wings, and in terror launches into the air, leaving her brood at my mercy. Far and near, above and beneath me, the anxious parent passes and repasses; her flight is now unnatural, and she seems crippled, for she would fain perform those actions in the air, which other birds perform on the ground or on the water, in such distressing moments of anxiety for the fate of their beloved young. Her many neighbours, all as suspicious as herself, well understand the meaning of her mode of flight, and one after another take to wing, so that the air is in a manner blackened with them. Some fly far over the waters, others glide along the face of the bold rock, but none that have observed me realight, and how many of those there are I am pretty certain, as the greater number follow in the track of the one most concerned. Meanwhile the little ones, in their great alarm, have crawled into a recess, and there they are huddled together. I have witnessed their pleasures and their terrors, and now, crawling backwards, I leave them to resume their ordinary state of peaceful security.
It was on the 3d of July 1833, about three in the morning, that I had the pleasure of witnessing the scene described above. I was aware before that a colony of Cormorants had nestled on the ledges of the great rocky wall that separated our harbour of Whapatiguan from the waters of the Gulf of St Lawrence. A strong gale had ruffled the sea, and the waves dashed with extreme violence against the rocks, to which circumstance, I believe, was owing my having remained a while unseen and unheard so near the birds, which were not more than four or five yards below me. The mother fondled and nursed her young with all possible tenderness, disgorged some food into the mouth of each, and coaxed them with her bill and wings. The little ones seemed very happy, billed with their mother, and caressed her about the breast. When the parent bird flew off on observing me, the young seemed quite frightened, squatted at once on their broad nest, and then crawled with the aid of their bills until they reached a recess where they remained concealed.
On another occasion, my young friends Lincoln and Cooledge, along with my son, went to the same rocks, for the purpose of bringing me a nest and some of the young Cormorants. They reported that, in one instance, they surprised the parent birds close beneath them, apparently asleep, resting on their rumps in an upright position, with the head thrust under the wing, and that, had they had a noose attached to their poles, they might have secured at least one of them, but that after a few minutes one drew out her head, stretched her neck, and after looking around flew off croaking, so as to alarm all her neighbours.
We saw no nests of this species placed in any other situations than the highest shelves of the precipitous rocks fronting the water and having a southern exposure. No other Cormorants bred on the spots of which this kind had taken possession; but Ravens and Peregrine Falcons were observed to have nests on the same rocks, and in some instances close to them. The nests were formed of a quantity of small dry sticks, matted in a rude manner with a large quantity of weeds and moss, to a thickness of four or five inches in new nests, and in others to that of a foot or more; for we observed that this species, as well as the Double-crested and the Florida Cormorants, repair and enlarge their tenements each season, and return to the same rocks many years in succession, as was shewn by their places of resort remaining whitewashed with excrements through the winter, in which condition we saw them previous to the arrival of the birds that season. The nests varied in breadth according to the space on which they were placed; where there was ample room, they measured at the base from thirty to thirty-six inches in diameter; others were scarcely large enough to hold the young, which nevertheless seemed as contented as their neighbours. On some shelves, eight or ten yards in extent, the nests were crowded together; but more usually they were placed apart on every secure place without any order; none, however, were below a certain height on the rocks, nor were there any on the summit. The nests being covered with filth, were offensive to the eye, and still more so to the nose. The eggs, three or four in number, more frequently the former, average two inches and five-eighths in length, by one inch and three quarters in breadth, the shell of a uniform pale bluish-green colour, mostly coated over with calcareous matter.