ROTCHE. 161 
December, 1846. ‘Every stream and burn falling into the 
Firth was discovered to have some of these active little 
divers, and so careless were they of the presence of man, 
that in some instances they were taken alive, while others 
are said to have been found in the interior of houses.’ 
In Orkney they occasionally appear in great numbers 
during winter. They were unusually abundant in the years 
1803 and 1812, in January, in 1846-7, and in 1850-1, in 
Sanday. They likewise visit Shetland. 
In Ireland they occur as stragglers. The late William 
Thompson, Hsq., of Belfast, has recorded their appearance 
in the counties of Kerry and Wexford. 
One cannot help feeling pity for these poor little sea-birds, 
driven so far from their native places by the unkindly blasts 
of hyperborean hurricanes, and cast ‘lean, rent, and beggared,’ 
on an alien and inhospitable element. It would have been 
natural to suppose that the ordinary severity of the stormy 
north would have rendered them proof against the milder 
winters of our climate, and that our wildest tempests would 
have seemed to them to blow but as ‘gentle gales.’ How- 
ever, from some cause or other, the contrary effect at times 
takes place; but inasmuch as it is an ‘ll wind that blows 
no one any good,’ so we may on the other hand take 
pleasure in the thought that their having been thus noticed 
in so many places, shews that there must be in each such 
case some one or more persons who both observe and record 
the occurrence of the birds that come in their way. ‘Quot 
avium tot homines.’ Every disadvantage is counterbalanced 
by some advantage; every evil by some good. What applies 
in the moral world applies equally, in its way, in the 
natural. ‘All things are double one against another,’ says 
the author of the Book of Ecclesiasticus, ‘and Gop hath 
made nothing imperfect.’ 
The Rotche is, as already observed, altogether devoted to 
a ‘life on the ocean wave,’ where alone it is at home, except 
indeed during the breeding-season, when, certainly, on the 
other hand, if never else, it must, in one sense, be allowed 
to be so. During the remainder of the year it never quits 
the ‘mighty deep,’ either in storm or calm, though some- 
times, as before shewn, the tremendous gales of the north are 
too much for even this hardy bird to struggle against. He 
cannot keep a ‘good offing,’ where, like the ship, he would 
be secure, but is forced among the billows and breakers, and 
VOL. VII. M 
