72 



THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



Fig. 3. Common Porpoise. 



This and the rarer stormy petrel and a third species, which all 

 resemble one another very closely, are commonly known to sail- 

 ors as " Mother Carey's chickens," a name quite generally applied 



to this family, and proba- 

 bly suggested, as Wilson 

 observes, by their myste- 

 rious appearance before 

 and during storms, their 

 ' great power of flight, and 

 obscure habits. The super- 

 stitious mariner may in- 

 deed have regarded his lit- 

 tle comrades not as har- 

 bingers merely, but as 

 agents in league with the 

 powers of darkness, direct- 

 ly concerned in bringing 

 the storm. Mother Carey is the mater cava ; so with the French 

 these birds are " oiseaux de Notre Dame." The gigantic fulmar 

 of the Pacific is known as " Mother Carey's goose," and hence the 

 phrase " Mother Carey is plucking her goose " that is, " it is 

 snowing." 



While the petrels do not " carry their eggs under their wings 

 and hatch them while resting on the sea," as seafaring men 

 affirmed, yet their domestic life seems to be curtailed as much as 

 possible. They nest in cavities in rocks along the coast or in bur- 

 rows in the ground, laying a single white egg. This species is 

 said to breed in Florida and the West India islands. 



The petrel belongs to the wild wastes of the sea, as the gull 

 belongs to the shore, and the swallow to inland districts. Sea 

 birds are as completely helpless when driven far inland as the 

 strictly land species are at 

 sea. Every now and then we 

 hear of some wanderer from 

 the coast being picked up 



iiu. 4. 8ali"a. 



half dead from exhaustion 



and fright hundreds of miles 



from the ocean, having been 



shipwrecked apparently and 



blown in thither during a 



storm. A case of this kind 



was communicated to me some time ago by a gentleman in 



Sharon, Vermont, where a specimen of the dovekie, or sea dove, a 



common bird of the northern New England coast, was found one 



morning in the fall on a neighbor's porch. 



The helplessness of our song birds when carried to sea is piti- 



