THE OCEAN SHORE 



depths, and can no longer be caught by striking or diving; and in 

 warmer latitudes a sudden change of temperature might be fatal 

 to the penguins. 



This opinion I cannot share. While such circumstances might be 

 fatal to individual birds of a weakly constitution, I do not think 

 they could ever threaten the existence of a whole species. They 

 would, on the contrary, have a selective action, inasmuch as the 

 weaker birds, and those whose instinct did not warn them against 

 wandering too far north, would be excluded from perpetuating 

 their species. Animals have always adapted themselves to natural 

 occurrences, and there have always been gales; yet sailors who 

 have visited the yet unexplored regions of the Antarctic invariably 

 speak of the indescribable profusion of sea-birds in those latitudes. 

 The penguins first began to grow rarer when men began to stamp 

 them down in barrels in order to extract their oil, and the albatrosses 

 when men began to plunder their breeding-places in the Pacific, 

 stealing their eggs, and killing the birds themselves — which, on 

 their lonely islands, were unaccustomed to the presence of enemies — 

 in order to adorn women's hats with their feathers. 



I have no doubt that the cause of this wholesale mortality of sea- 

 birds is that which has killed so many round Heligoland, The oil 

 thrown overboard by steamers which burn oil fuel spreads over the 

 surface of the water, and the birds alight on it, or swim through it, 

 as the penguins do; their feathers become matted together, so that 

 they can no longer keep the water from their skin, with the result 

 that they catch cold and die. Thousands of lovely birds perish in 

 this way, and unless some device is soon invented which will prevent 

 the discharge of such oil, and unless its use is made compulsory by 

 law, the seas will one day lie dead in the sunlight : they will have 

 lost their living beauty. 



Man to-day is terribly estranged from Nature, to his own detri- 

 ment, for he thereby loses much of the joy of life. Perhaps the 

 steamship companies might be induced to intervene on behalf of 

 the sea-birds, for it is obviously to their advantage that a sea-voyage 

 should be as interesting as possible. For after a week or two at sea 

 the grey spectre of boredom makes its appearance, and as time 

 goes on deck-sports and dancing no longer suffice to dispel it. 

 It has always been my experience that everyone wakes up at once 

 the moment a whale is sighted, or when a rare sea-bird is seen to 

 be following the ship. 



Just as watering-places anxious to attract visitors are careful to 



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