THE ALBATROSS. 163 
element, and without ever touching the water with his pinions, 
rises with the rising billow, and falls with the falling wave. 
It is truly wonderful how he bids 
defiauce to the fury of the unshac- 
kled elements, and how quietly he 
faces the gale. “He seems quite 
at home,” say the sailors; and in- 
deed this expression is perfectly 
characteristic of his graceful ease as 
he hovers over the agitated ocean. 
The albatross exceeds the swan in 
size, attains a weight of from 12lbs. Wandering Albatross. 
to 28lbs., and extends his wings from 
ten to thirteen feet. His plumage is white and black, harmonising 
with the wave-crest and the storm-cloud. For weeks and months 
together he is seen to follow the course of a ship; but, according 
to Mr. Harvey (Sea Side Book), “the time he can remain on 
the wing seems to have been much exaggerated, for although, 
like the gull and the petrel, he is no diving-bird, he swims 
with the greatest ease; and notwithstanding the enormous 
length of his pinions, knows well how to rise again into the 
air. He is indeed unable to take wing from a narrow deck, 
but when he wishes to rise from the sea, he runs along flapping 
the waters until he has acquired the necessary impetus, or meets 
with a wave of a sufficient height, from whose lofty crest he 
starts as from a rocky pinnacle, and resumes his extensive flight 
over an immense expanse of ocean.” A short-winged species 
frequents the waters of Kamtschatka and Japan; but the 
wandering albatross (D. eculans) belongs more particularly to 
the southern hemisphere, being rarely seen to the north of 30° 
S. lat., and appearing more frequently as the higher latitudes 
are approached. The regions of storms — the Cape of Good 
Hope and Cape Horn—are his favourite resorts, and all travellers 
know that the southern point of Africa is not far distant as soon as 
the albatrosses show themselves in larger numbers, These birds 
are the vultures of the ocean; their crooked sharp-edged beak 
is better adapted to lacerate a lifeless prey, than to seize upon 
the rapid fish as it darts swiftly along below the surface of 
the waters. From a vast distance they smell the floating carcase 
of a whale, and soon alight in considerable numbers upon the 
