677 



BOOBY. 



BORAGINACEvE, 



accounts of the constant persecution to which the latter are subjected 

 by the Frigates or Man-of-War Birds. Lesson indeed doubts this. 

 He says, " The boobies hare been so named because it has been 

 supposed that the frigates compelled them to disgorge the fish which 

 they had taken ; but this appears to us to be erroneous. The booby 

 is warlike, he lives fearlessly near the frigate, and swallows the fish 

 which he has captured in peace." Buffon, Cuvier, and Temminck, on 

 the contrary, evidently give credence to the narratives of the Frigate- 

 persecution, and indeed it is difficult to believe that so many eye- 

 witnesses should be mistaken. 





Brown Booby (Sulaftitca). 



Feuille'e says, " I have had the pleasure of seeing the frigates give 

 chase to the .boobies. When they return in bands towards evening 

 from their fishing, the frigates are in waiting, and dashing upon them 

 compel them all to cry for succour, as it were, and, in crying, to dis- 

 gorge some of the fish which they are carrying to their young ones. 

 Thus do the frigates profit by the fishing of the boobies, which they 

 then leave to pursue their route." Leguat in his voyage thus writes : 

 " The boobies come to repose at night upon the Island Rodriguez, 

 and the frigates, which are large birds, so called from their lightness 

 and speed in sailing through the air, wait for the boobies every evening 

 on the tops of the frees. They rise on the approach of the latter very 

 high in the air and dash down upon them like a falcon on his prey, 

 not to kill them but to make them disgorge. The booby, struck in 

 this manner by the frigate, gives up his fish, which the frigate catches 

 in the air. The booby often shrieks and shows his unwillingness to 

 abandon his prey, but the frigate mocks at his cries, and rising dashes 

 down, upon him anew till he has compelled the booby to obey." 

 William Dampier observes that he remarked that the man-of-war 

 birds and the boobies always left sentinels near their young ones, 

 especially while the old birds were gone to sea on their fishing expe- 

 ditions ; and that there were a great number of sick or crippled man- 

 of-war birds which appeared to be no longer in a state to go out for 

 pr> i vision. They d welt not with the rest of their species, and whether 

 they were excluded from their society or had separated themselves 

 voluntarily, they were dispersed in various places waiting apparently 

 for an opportunity of pillage. He adds that one day he saw more 

 than twenty on one of the islands (the Alcranes), which from time to 

 time made sorties to procure booty. The man-of-war bird that sur- 

 prised a young booby without its guard gave it a great peck upon the 

 back to make it disgorge (which it instantly did) a fish or two as big 

 as one's wrist, which the old man-of-war bird quickly swallowed. He 

 further speaks of the persecution of the parent boobies by the able- 

 bodied frigates, and says that he himself saw a frigate fly right against 

 a booby, and with one blow of its bill make the booby give up a fish 

 just swallowed, upon which the frigate darted with such celerity that 

 he seized it before it reached the water. C'atesby and others mention 

 similar encounters. Nuttall says, " The boobies have a domestic 

 enemy more steady, though less sanguine in his persecutions, than 

 man ; this in the frigate pelican or man-of-war bird, who with a keen 

 eye descrying his humble vassal at a distance, pursues him without 

 intermission, and obliges him by blows with its wings and bill to 

 surrender hix finny prey, which the pirate instantly seizes and swallows. 

 .... The booby utters a loud cry, something in sound betwixt 



WAT. HIST. DIV. VOL. I. 



that of the raven and the goose ; and this quailing is heard more 

 particularly when they are pursued by the frigate, or, when assembled 

 together, they happen to be seized by any sudden panic." 



Their nests, according to Dampier, are built in trees in the Isle of 

 Aves, though they have been observed in other places to nestle on 

 the ground. They always associate in numbers in the same spot, and 

 lay one or two eggs. The young are covered with a very soft and 

 white down. Nuttall says that they abound on rocky islets off the 

 coast of Cayenne and along the shores of New Spain and Caracas, as 

 well as in Brazil and on the Bahamas, where they are said to breed 

 almost every month in the year. In summer, he adds, they are not 

 uncommon on the coasts of the Southern States of North America. 

 The flesh he describes as black and unsavoury. 



Other species of Sola are also called Boobies. [SuLA.] 



BO'OPS, a genus of Fishes of the order Acanthopteryyii, and, accord- 

 ing to Cuvier's arrangement, belonging to the fourth family of that 

 tribe called Sparoide or Sparidce. 



This genus is chiefly characterised by the species possessing tren- 

 chant teeth ; the mouth is small and not protractile. The species are 

 generally of brilliant colouring. Most of them occur in the Mediter- 

 ranean. 



Soaps lalpa (Sparus sal pa of Linnseus) is of an oblong-ovate form . 

 The ground colour of its body is bluish, on which are several longi- 

 tudinal yellow stripes. 



BOOTTIA, a genus of plants belonging to the natural order Hydro- 

 charidacece, the species of which are eaten as pot-herbs. 



BORACITE. [BORON.] 



BORAGE. [BoRAGO.] 



BORAGINA'CE^E, Borage-Worts, the BorageTribe, a natural order 

 of regular-flowered Mouopetalous Dicotyledons, which are readily dis- 

 tinguished from all others by having their ovary deeply divided into 

 four lobes, from the middle of which arises a single style. They are 

 moreover characterised by their flowers being arranged in a gyrate 



Lung-Wort (Pulmotinria anguttifolia). 



1, A corolla ; 2, the same cut open ; 3, the tube of the same ; 4, the bit.se of. 

 the game with the ovary and iU four lobes ; 5, an anther ; 6, calyx ; 7, a section, 

 of the calyx, showing the four-lobed fruit j 8, a ripe calyx ; 9, an achcnium. 



manner before they expand. The Common Borage is often taken as I 

 the type of this order, and in fact represents not only its peculiarities, 

 of structure, but sensible properties; for all the known species agree 1 

 in having an insipid juice, and their surface covered over with stiff; 

 white hairs, which communicate a peculiar asperity to the skin, whence 

 these plants were formerly called Aeperifolue, or 'rough-leaved.' In' 

 the structure of their ovary these plants are closely allied with 

 Lamiacece. Their regular flowers and the absence of volatile oil in 



2 P 



