DISTRIBUTION OF ANIMALS. 



581 



flying backwards and forwards. The noise of such a multitude of birds is confounding, 

 and in vain a person asks a question of his nearest neighbour. The harsh tones of the 

 kittiwake are heard above the whole, the intervals being filled with the monotonous note 

 of the auk, and the softer voice of the guillemot. When Graba, from whose travels this 

 description is principally drawn, visited the Vogel-berg, he was tempted by the sight of a 

 crested cormorant to fire a gun, but what became of it, he remarks, it was impossible to 

 ascertain. The air wr.s darkened by the birds roused from their repose. Thousands 

 hastened out of the chasm with a frightful noise, and spread themselves in troops over the 

 ocean. The puffins came wandering from their holes, and regarded the universal con 

 fusion with comic gestures. The kittiwakes remained composedly in their nests, whilst 

 the cormorants tumbled headlong into the sea. Similar great congregations of the 

 feathered race appear where the shores are rocky, high, and precipitous, but this is strik 

 ingly the case, where 



" The northern ocean, in vast whirls, 



Boils round the naked melancholy isles 

 Of farthest Thule ; and the Atlantic surge 

 Pours in among the stormy Hebrides. 

 Who can recount what transmigrations there 

 Are annual made? what nations come and go ? 

 And how the living clouds on clouds arise? 

 Infinite wings ! till all the plume-dark air 

 And rude resounding shore are one wild cry." 



Most terrestrial birds, unacquainted with man, exhibit a remark 

 able tameness, and are slow in acquiring a dread of him, even after 

 repeated lessons that danger is to be apprehended from his neigh 

 bourhood. Mr. Darwin speaks of a gun as almost superfluous in the 

 unfrequented districts of South America, for with its muzzle he 

 pushed a hawk off the branch of a tree. Once, while lying down, a 

 mocking thrush alighted on the edge of a pitcher, made of the shell 

 of a tortoise, which he was holding in his hand, and began very 

 leisurely to sip the water, even allowing him to handle it while 

 seated on the vessel. In Charles Island, which had been colonised 

 about six years, he saw a boy sitting by a well with a switch in 

 his hand, with which he killed the doves and finches as they came 

 to drink ; and for some time he had been constantly in the habit 

 of waiting by the well for the same purpose, 

 to provide himself with his dinners. In the #*. 



Falkland Islands, at Bourbon, and at Tristan 

 d'Acunha, the same tameness was noticed 



