Hamilton. — On the Broivn Gannet, dc. 131 



In the case of most animals which, from not knowing his 

 power, have suffered man to approach them to their destruc- 

 tion, ah\rm has been soon taken, the idea of danger has been 

 speedily associated with his appearance, and safety has "been 

 sought in flight ; but the wings of the booby are so long and 

 its legs so short that, when once at rest on level ground, the 

 bird has great difficulty in bringing the former into action, and 

 when so surprised it has no resource but to put on a show of 

 resistance with its beak, which is, to be sure, generally despised 

 by its persecutor. 



In the cases recorded by Bligh the birds were probably 

 fatigued by wandering too far from the rocky shores which 

 are their ordinary haunts. There they are generally to be 

 seen constantly on the wing over the waves which beat at the 

 foot of the crags, intent on fishing. 



Though so well furnished with oars they are said to swim 

 but seldom or never to dive. Their mode of taking their prey 

 is by dashing down from on high with unerring aim upon 

 those fishes which frequent the surface, and instantly rising 

 again in the air. They walk wdth difficult}^ and when at rest 

 on land their attitude is nearly vertical, and they lean on the 

 stiff feathers of the tail, like the cormorants, as a third point 

 of support. The ledges of rocks or cliffs covered with herbage 

 are the places generally selected for the nest, and there in great 

 companies they lay their eggs, each hen bird laying from two 

 to three. The young birds for some days after hatching are 

 covered with a down so long and thick that they resemble 

 powder-paffs made of sw^an's down. 



The boobies seldom wander more than twenty leagues from 

 land, to which they usually return every evening ; and their 

 appearance is considered by mariners as a sure token of their 

 vicinity to some island or coast. 



The colour of the Sidafusca, or Brown Booby, is blackish- 

 brown or ashy-brown above and whitish beneath ; the pri- 

 maries are black, and the naked skin about the head is reddish ; 

 the orbits and base of the bill are yellow, and the point of 

 the bill is brown ; the legs are of a straw-colour. In length 

 the brown booby is about 2ft. oin, the bill measures 4^in. or 

 thereabout, and the tail lOin. The young birds are spotted 

 with white and brown. 



It is almost impossible to open the pages of the old 

 voyagers who have fallen in with these boobies without finding 

 some accounts of the constant persecution to which the latter 

 are subjected by the frigate or man-of-war birds. 



Lesson, indeed, doubts this. He says, " The boobies 



have been so named because it has been supposed that the 



frigates compel them to disgorge the fish wdiich they had 



taken ; but this appears to me to be erroneous. The booby is 



9 



