OcEAN WANDERERS 
advancing wave. Something was cast struggling 
ashore, helpless before each succeeding wave that 
worried it as a wild beast its prey. When I reached 
the spot; picked! up a Leach’s-Petrel. Poor thing, 
it was bedraggled with water and with its own oil, 
and evidently near the bourne of life. The kindest 
thing I could do was to put my heel on it and end 
its sufferings. I wondered if this were not one of 
innumerable like cases, where the bird tires of being 
kept awing by the raging of the elements, and falls, 
at length, exhausted, into the vortex of destruction. 
The movements of these birds depend largely 
upon the supply of food, which consists of small 
fish and all sorts of minute marine creatures. ‘They 
love to congregate where whales are found, to pick 
up any leavings and secure their share of he small 
bait-fish thea the monsters pursue. Shearwaters 
and Petrels are redolent with oil. When handled 
they squirt out a yellowish oil from the nostrils. 
When the whales are about, the water has some- 
times, in calm weather, seemed to me noticeably 
greasy, and I was tempted to imagine that the 
Petrels, that were everywhere pattering about, were 
engaged in skimming from the water choice and 
nutritious whale-oil! ‘The birds are scavengers in 
part, but one wonders what they find to eat, as there 
is so little on the ocean surface visible to the human 
eye. The fact is, however, that the upper stratum 
of the ocean teems with lite. 
One is never sure of finding them abundant in 
any one locality, even on successive days. Now 
and then I have seen numbers of them just off 
Chatham Bars, but usually they are not common 
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