A HAWK CAUGHT BY A HERRING.
[TO THE EDITOR 07 THE " SPECTATOB.1
have only to-day received my copy of the Spectator for July 23rd; hence the lateness of this communication, which, nevertheless, I hope you may deem of sufficient interest to publish. I write a gropes of the remarkable story of the eagle and salmon which finds a place in Mr. Reynardson's "Sport, Travel, and Politics," reviewed by you.
The inhabitants of this bay (Baie-des-Chaleur) use large quantities of herring and other fish as field manure. Some weeks ago, one of my parishioners discovered in one of the numerous heaps of herring lying upon his field, an ordinary sized herring, taken with others in a net, in whose back were deeply embedded the claws and legs (up to the knee-joints) of a bird, apparently of the hawk tribe. It need hardly be said that they lacked skin and feathers. I have tried to account for this very unusual, if not unique phenomenon, but hitherto without any success, and I am forced to confess myself beaten. If either the fish had been larger or the bird smaller, the occurrence would have been exactly similar to that related by Mr. Reynardson, and a sub- stantial evidence of its correctness. But it is positively certain that the bird was, proportionately, much larger than the herring, which was, as I have stated, of no more than the average size. It would interest me greatly to hear of similar cases, if such there
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