NESTS AND EGGS. . 395 
bed can be covered, when the parent leaves her nest at low tide 
to go and seek for food. 
One can hardly contemplate without emotion that Divine good- 
ness which gives industry to the feeble, and forethought to the 
ignorant. The nest is robbed of its down twice, and sometimes 
a third time. The poor mother has to replace it from her own 
breast. She reproduces her plumage, and again robs herself to 
keep her nest at the right degree of warmth. When her provision 
of brownish down is exhausted, her mate comes to her help, and 
sacrifices, in his turn, his beautiful snow-white or rose-tinted 
eider-down. Each nest furnishes, on an average, half a pound of 
down. 
When we consider the immense swarms of aquatic birds that 
inhabit the coasts of all the islands of Northern Europe, we are 
really lost in wonder! The most arid sands, the steepest rocks, 
the most inaccessible clefts, all are invaded, and even crowded, by 
nests and brooding birds. Many birds lay only one egg, and often 
place it in such a spot that it is difficult to understand how incuba- 
tion can be accomplished. Sea-eagles, falcons, gulls, suck the eggs, 
or carry off the young birds. The arctic gull nourishes her brood 
with young gannets, penguins, and fulmars, which she steals from 
their parents. Many large fish, too, feed on more than one kind 
of bird, large as well as small. 
Hundreds of birds die of cold during winter. Whole colonies 
are destroyed by the tides, or swept away by hurricanes. And 
who can say how many are sacrificed to our wants and our 
pleasures? Notwithstanding all these calamities, the number of 
marine birds is undiminished, and the dreary expanse of the ocean 
is ever animated and enlivened by their presence. 
