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CHAPTER III. 

 THE TROPIC-BIRDS. 



" Spirit of ethereal birth! 

 Aerial visitant of earth ! 

 Take me o'er the proud, blue sea, 

 Show its beauties all to me." 



Eliza Cook. 



IN Mythology, Phaeton was the child of the sun; in Ornithology it is essentially 



the bird of the sun. The hotter the weather, and the fiercer the glare, the 



more do they appear in their element. 



There are three distinct birds of this species. They are distributed throughout the 



tropics. At sea they go by the name of Boatswain- (bosun) birds, on account of their 



piping cry. 



The Red-tailed Tropic-bird {Phncton pluniicunis). — The first Eed-tailed Tropic-bird I 

 ever saw was from board ship one l)rilliaut morning, somewhere near the Equator, when 

 l^yjama-clad, I was admiring, as a novice, the wonderful beauty of the scene. Compare 

 with our English suns that ball of fire, now rising with a halo of glory that is fast setting ablaze 

 the whole of the eastern horizon ; look out at the far -spreading glistening sea dotted with tiny 

 Portuguese men-of-war, catching each breath of wind with their rainbow-coloured sails; watch 

 those glittering shoals of flying-fish, skimming the water to escape the golden-tinned albicore, 

 and then plunging into the ocean with a header refreshing to behold ; now look straight 

 overhead, and behold, standing out in bold relief against the harebell blue of an absolutely 

 cloudless sky, a pure white fairy-bird, with scarlet beak and tail. You need not ask its 

 board-ship name, for is not that shrill piping cry, now answered by its mate, the very 

 counterpart of Frost, the boatswain, piping " all hands." It is, indeed, the Bosun-bird, 

 welcoming us to his beloved tropics. Some years after, in very different surroundings, I 

 obtained a good specimen of this beautiful bird. Certainly it was in the Tropics, for you 

 seldom see them outside its limits ; but it was dull, murky weather, and blowing hard. 

 Notwithstanding the inhospitable elements, a Red-tailed Tropic-bird kept racing round our 

 ship, till a long and lucky shot to windward, aided by the friendly gale, landed him on board. 



