Retrospective Criticism, 373 



Society's Catalogue, where a picture of it is given, at the fol- 

 lowing dimensions : — " Length from tip of bill to extremity of 

 tail, 3 ft. 4 in. ; expansion of wings, 9 ft." The mean of these 

 three statements of the spread of the wings of the albatross, 

 is 10ft. 10 in.; and although true, without doubt, is the 

 proverb "Medio tutissimus ibis" (the middle course is the 

 safest), we care less about the precise dimensions than to 

 show that the expansion is on all hands admitted to be great. 

 This great expansion of wings, and that wonderful provision 

 in the physiology of birds, by which they are enabled to 

 charge and fill every bone in their body with rarefied air, 

 to promote and secure, as by a series of balloons, their 

 buoyancy ; and, together with the comparative smallness, and 

 therefore lightness, of the body of the albatross, in part pre- 

 pare us to give credence to a supposition entertained by some, 

 that this bird sleeps while on the wing, and the great distance 

 from any land at which it is frequently seen towards the 

 close of day farther favours the supposition. This power of 

 sleeping in the air has been alluded to by Thomas Moore, 

 in his beautiful Eastern poem of Lalla Rookh, where, de- 

 scribing a rocky mountain beetling awfully o'er the Sea of 

 Oman, he says, 



" While on its peak, that braved the sky, 

 A ruin'd temple tower'd, so high 

 That oft the sleeping albatross 

 Struck the wild ruins with her wing, 

 And from her cloud-rock'd slumbering 

 Started, to find man's dwelling there 

 In her own silent fields of air." 



This elegant quotation was kindly pointed out to us by 

 S. T. P., whose lucid remarks have so often enriched our 

 pages. 



The albatross is doubtless spoken of in the following facts 

 told us by a sailor friend, now dead and gone: — "A very 

 large bird sometimes alights upon the yards of vessels passing 

 the coast of the Cape of Good Hope ; and no sooner is it 

 upon the yards than it is asleep, and, while sleeping, is very 

 easily captured. When upon the deck, it cannot soar into 

 the air, on account of the length of its wings. It makes a 

 loud and disagreeable noise when molested. It is called 

 ' the booby' by the crew." 



The term " booby" is, we have since been told, commonly 

 applied by sailors to any long-winged bird of a whitish colour ; 

 although, in the above case of the albatross, the term would 

 seem to express its incautious or booby-like habit of going to 

 sleep within reach of molestation ; a habit which those who 



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