22 THE ARCHITECTURE OF BIRDS. 




The Stormy Petrel (Thalassidroma pelagica, Vigors). Length, 
about six inches. 
“There are,” says the same writer in another 
place, “few persons who have crossed the Atlantic 
that have not observed these solitary wanderers of 
the deep skimming along the surface of the wild 
and wasteful ocean; flitting past the vessel like 
swallows, or following in her wake, gleaning their 
scanty pittance of food from the rough and whirling 
surges. Habited in mourning, and making their ap- 
pearance generally in greater numbers previous to 
or during a storm, they have long been fearfully re- 
garded by the ignorant and superstitious, not only as 
the foreboding messengers of tempests and dangers 
to the hapless mariner, but as wicked agents, con- 
nected some how or other in creating them. ‘ No- 
body,’ say they, ‘can tell anything of where they 
come from, or how they breed, though (as sailors 
sometimes say) it is supposed that they hatch their 
eggs under their wings as they sit on the water.’ 
This mysterious uncertainty of their origin, and the 
circumstances above recited, have doubtless given 
rise to the opinion so prevalent among this class of 
