THE TROPIC BIRD. 261 
The group comprehends those Birds which have the base of the 
bill denuded of feathers, the nostrils mere slots, in which the opening 
is scarcely perceptible ; the skin of the throat more or less capable of 
distension ; the tongue small. Some of the group are large and heavy 
birds, but they are all gifted with powerful wings; they are, at the 
same time, good swimmers. 
Tue Tropic Birp (Phaeson). 
The Palmipede we are about to notice received from Linnzeus the 
mythological name of Phaeton, in allusion to the son of Apollo and 
Clymene, who is said to have made an audacious attempt to drive the 
chariot of the Sun. 
These Birds are well known to navigators as the harbingers which 
foretell the approach to the tropics. ‘They are distinguished by two 
long, slender tail-feathers, whence their French name of fazdle en 
gueue. They are gifted with great length of wing, which, with their 
feeble feet, proclaims them formed especially for flight. They are 
accordingly swift and untiring in flight, heedlessly going far out to sea ; 
forming, as Lesson remarks, a well-defined and purely geographical 
group, their homes being in rocky islands, to which they usually 
return every night. Nevertheless, he frequently met with them in 
tracks of ocean far from any land, possibly they having been swept 
beyond their natural limits by the sudden squalls and hurricanes so 
frequent in equatorial seas. 
The Common Tropic Bird (Phacton athereus, Fig. 96) seems to 
confine itself, according to this writer, to the Atlantic Ocean, stop- 
ping near the confines of the Indian Ocean ; the other species, the 
Roseate Tropic Bird (Phaeton phenicurus), which is larger than the 
former, seeming to belong further eastward, both meeting in nearly 
equal numbers at the Mauritius and other islands of the same group. 
Their flight is described as calm and quiet, composed of frequent 
strokes of the wing, interrupted by sudden falls. The bird is about 
the size of a partridge, with red bill and markings under the lower 
mandible; in general appearance it resembles the Gulls, but has 
longer and more powerful wings; the legs and feet are vermilion 
red, the latter webbed ; the tail has two long, narrow feathers. One 
of their breeding-places is the Bermudas, where the high rocks which 
~surround the island are a protection from the attacks of the fowler. 
The Yellow-beaked Phaeton (Phaeton flavirostris), a third species, 
is distinguished by the colour of its beak. It is a native of the Islands 
of Bourbon and Mauritius. 
