The strange case of the halibut and the cormorant, recently reported
in the daily Press, has brought us a budget of interesting letters,
from which we select the following as agreeable evidence of the return
of normal conditions in the fish-story-telling industry:--
_Gullane, N.B._
Dear Sir,--One of the most striking results of the War has been
its effect on the mentality of birds and animals and even fishes.
The papers have lately contained accounts of a halibut which
swallowed a cormorant and survived the exploit only to fall a
victim to the wiles of a North Sea fisherman. As the cormorant
is generally regarded to be the _dernier cri_ in voracity, the
incident illustrates the old saying of the biter bit. As a rule
birds of prey have the upper hand in their contests with the
finny denizens of the deep. But the triumph of the halibut is not
altogether unprecedented. I remember, when I was cruising in the
China Seas in the year 1854, witnessing a combat between a dolphin
and a Bombay duck, in which the latter came off second-best. And
some thirty years later, during a yachting excursion off the
Scilly Isles, I saw an even more remarkable duel between a
porbeagle--as the Cornish people call the mackerel-shark--and a
pipit, in which, strange to relate, the bird came off victorious.
Believe me to be, Sir,
Yours truthfully,