OF THE BIRDS AND LARGER FISHES 27 



tempted even to jump in and give the brave creatures 

 a hand, when it seemed impossible for them to keep 

 up the struggle any longer. Yet, after being lost to 

 view, engulfed by a huge breaker, one would see 

 soon a duck appear, and after it a dog's head, still 

 true to its hazardous duty. Sometimes, however, 

 they are really lost. 



Petrels, loons, divers, gulls, guillemots, widgeon, 

 teal, scoters, puffins, shanks, sandpipers and other 

 waders abound. These are shot in the fall, and 

 salted down for future consumption. Their eggs are 

 also collected for eating ; and though we found even 

 the eggs of the domestic hen, when allowed to feed 

 on fish remains, too highly flavoured to be appetizing, 

 yet I have seen healthy babies flourishing on gulls' 

 eggs. Whitbourne, writing in 1612, speaks of the 

 utility of the penguin the great auk was common 

 then. He says, " These penguins are bigge as geese, 

 and flye not, for they haue but a short wing, and 

 they multiply so infinitely upon a certain flat Hand, 

 that men drive them from thence upon a boord into 

 their boats by hundreds at a time ; as if God had 

 made the innocency of so poore a creature to become 

 such an admirable instrument for the sustentation of 

 man." Then, as now, he says the "fishermen doe 

 bait their hookes with the flesh," and also that they 

 were so fat that the men drew threads through under 

 the skin and used them as candles. 



