PROCELLARIID^. 5 



small size of the bird in that state is well shown at the Natural History Museum (South 

 Kensington), where the skeleton of an Albatross is placed side by side with a stuffed specimen. 



The birds vary much in colour, from pure white, speckled or spotted with grey, to a 

 uniform chocolate-brown, and, though a very white bird is of necessity old, and a brown bird 

 is more or less young,- this difference is by no means altogether dependent on tbe age of the 

 bird or the season of the year. The chocolate-brown birds are rather common, and always 

 have a white face. Those I have seen and caught were quite as large as the lighter-coloured 

 birds ; in fact the largest Albatross that I know of is a chocolate-coloured bird, now on view 

 at the Natural History Museum. 



The specimen from which Fig. 1 was painted I caught in 42° 48' S., 69°43'E. It 

 measured six feet across the wings ; and I kept it on account of the unusually beautiful 

 pencil-marking on the breast. All sorts of exaggerated reports are common talk, both at sea 

 and on land, with regard to its spread of wing, which, though enormous, is rarely found to 

 exceed eleven feet four inches from tip to tip. I once made the voyage round the world with 

 a captain who had studied Albatrosses for forty years. During that period he had caught 

 an incredible number, and I myself have frequently seen him capture twelve or so in a 

 day. He always made a point of measuring them most accurately across the wings, and 

 in all his vast experience he never found one over eleven feet four inches. I have caught 

 and measured considerably over a hundred myself, and, curiously enough, my largest birds 

 were also eleven feet four inches from tip to tip. 



It is these wonderful wings, with their huge hollow bones, that give to the Albatross 

 its marvellous flying powers. Sailors say that the bird trims its wings to the breeze, and 

 can thus sail along within one or two points of the wind's eye. The action of the wind 

 itself on the wings, however, can have nothing to do with the bird's progression through 

 the air, as it is the resistance of the water that causes a ship to forge ahead when 

 sailing "on a wind." In 'Cassell's Natural History' (vol. iv.), in the description of the 

 Albatross, this matter is cleverly dealt with. Dr. Bennett states that he believes the 

 whole surface of the body of the Albatross is covered by numerous air-cells capable of 

 voluntary inflation or diminution by means of a beautiful muscular ajiparatus. By this 

 power the birds can raise or depress themselves at will. But there is nothing in their 

 up and down flight sufficiently out of the common to require any apparatus different from 

 other birds, and, with regard to their ordinary flying, Darwin's remarks on the Condor 

 are very applicable. He says : — " The force to keep up the momentum of a body moving 

 in a horizontal plane cannot be great, and this force is all that is wanted — a movement 

 of neck and body appears sufiicient." 



