"The fish-hawks," said he, "set us a good example, for they eat them, and so do the eagles and herons.

I watched one the other day with a mussel in his bill; he flew to a high tree, let his prey fall, and immediately darted down to secure it; but I drove him off, and, to my great amusement, perceived the wise fellow had just let it fall on a stone, which had cracked the shell for him just in the right place.

I often see shells lying at the foot of trees, far up the hills, where these birds must have left them.

There is one large thick-shelled mussel, that I have found several times with a round hole drilled through the shell, just as if it had been done with a small auger, doubtless the work of some bird with a strong beak." "Do you remember," said Catharine, "the fine pink mussel-shell that Hec.
picked up in the little corn-field last year; it had a hole in one of the shells too; _[FN: This ingenious mode of cracking the shells of mussels is common to many birds.

The crow (_Corvus corone_) has been long known by American naturalists to break the thick shells of the river mussels, by letting them fall from a height on to rocks and stones.]_ and when my uncle saw it, he said it must have been dropped by some large bird, a fish-hawk possibly, or a heron, and brought from the great lake, as it had been taken out of some deep water, the mussels in our creeks being quite thin-shelled and white." "Do you remember what a quantity of large fish bones we found in the eagle's nest on the top of our hill, Louis ?" said Hector.
"I do; those fish must have been larger than our perch and sun-fish; they were brought from this very lake, I dare say." "If we had a good canoe now, or a boat, and a strong hook and line, we might become great fishermen." "Louis," said Catharine, "is always thinking about canoes, and boats, and skiffs; he ought to have been a sailor." Louis was confident that if they had a canoe he could soon learn to manage her; he was an excellent sailor already in theory.