PREFACE. 



HE FOLLOWING Notes on Ocean Birds, their appearance and habits, have 

 been compiled with the special object of interesting, and at the same time, 

 to some small extent, instructing a special class of readers — those who are 

 led by business, or pleasure, or the pursuit of health, to take a long sea voyage. And 

 it may be stated at the outset that the birds depicted and described in the following 

 pages are those usually seen in the course of a voyage from England to Australia or 

 New Zealand round the Cape of Good Hope, and home round Cape Horn, thus 

 completing a tour round the world. Those of us alone who have made a voyage of 

 this kind can appreciate fully the interest which attaches to Ocean Bird-life. 



Every passenger who embarks on board a ship bound for Australasia, is well 

 aware that the voyage in prospect must, from more than one point of view, be 

 monotonous. For a period of some three months he will be cribbed, cabined, and 

 confined within the narrow limits of the ship's decks, and restricted as to society to 

 a small circle of fellow-passengers, amongst whom it must be hoped that he will find a 

 few with tastes and trains of thought congenial to his own. In point of exercise he will 

 be limited to his daily constitutionals on the poop or in the waist of the ship, and to 

 occasional climbs aloft, upon which latter he will venture with no slight amount of 

 trepidation. Amusements will be open to him in the shape of the ordinary games, such 

 as cock-fighting, boxing, and small cricket, that can be carried on on deck, and chess 

 tournaments, theatricals, and concerts will occupy pleasantly many a lazy hour. If wise, 

 he will not fail to take with him a goodly store of standard books, for one always finds 

 on board ship more time for reading than falls to one's lot when ashore. Stirring events 



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