162 THE INHABITANTS OF THE SEA. 
upon the drift ice. Thus nature has set bounds to petrels, as to 
all other creatures that swim or fly in and over the ocean, and 
has divided the wide deserts of the sea among their different 
species. Who can tell us the mysterious laws which assign to 
each of them its limits? Who can show us the invisible barriers 
they are not allowed to pass ? 
The Stormy Petrel (1’. pelagica) seems to belong to every 
sea. It is about the size of a swallow, and in its general ap- 
Stormy retrel. 
pearance and flight is not unlike that bird. Although the smallest 
web-footed bird known, it braves the utmost fury of the tempest, 
often skimming with incredible velocity the trough of the waves, 
and sometimes gliding rapidly over their snowy crests. Like all 
of its kind, it lives almost constantly at sea, and seeks during 
the breeding season some lonely rock, where it deposits in some 
fissure or crevice its solitary egg. 
The mode of life of the petrels corresponds but little with 
their external beauty; they are in fact the crows of the ocean, 
and live upon the dead animal substances floating on its surface. 
Wherever the carcase of a whale, borne along by the current, 
covers the sea with a long stripe of putrid oil, they are seen 
feasting in the polluted waters. All petrels have the remarkable 
faculty of spouting oil of a very offensive smell, from their 
nostrils when alarmed, and this apparently as a means of 
defence. 
The Albatross (Diomedea exulans) is the monarch of the high 
seas; the picture of a hero, who, under every storm of adverse 
fortune, preserves the immoveable constancy of an undaunted 
heart. Proud and majestic, he swims along in his own native 
