sand to the depth of a foot or more. The eggs are white and almost transparent. 

 The young are fed with an oily substance which the parents raise from their 

 own stomachs and pump down the throats of the babies with an odd cluttering 

 sound, like a frog's. It is said that the parents rove the sea during the day and 

 feed their young at night. Basket says : "The baby petrels revel in the delights 

 of a cod-liver oil diet from the start." 



Indeed, the bodies of petrels are largely oil, no doubt from feeding so much 

 on fatty substances. It is said that the people of Faro Island draw a wick through 

 the body of the petrel and burn it for a lamp ! Leach's petrel has so much oil 

 about it, that when it is handled it squirts out a yellowish oil from the nostrils. 

 This oil has a pungent, musk-like odor and there is so much of it about their 

 nesting site that searchers have been guided by it to the nests. 



Probably at least a dozen other forms have been recorded on our continent 

 as the petrels are great wanderers and frequently stray out of their course. The 

 feet are webbed and the wings are long and powerful. The flesh is so oily that 

 the plucked body of a petrel supplied with a wick, similar to that of a candle, 

 will burn for over an hour. 



Petrels feed from the surface of the water, picking up food while swimming 

 or while on the wing. They seem to delight in following vessels at sea to pick 

 up the refuse matter thrown overboard as they fly close to the water. They also 

 follow the breakers often seizing an unfortunate crab or crawfish that is cast 

 up by the waves. 



Wilson's petrel resorts to islands in the Southern Hemisphere during the 

 breeding season. The single white egg, sometimes faintly wreathed with dull 

 lavender, is incubated at the end of a three-foot burrow. The tube-nosed 

 swimmers lay but a single egg. When disturbed on their nests they emit an oily 

 substance from their crops very disagreeable to the intruder. 



343 



