394 THE ALBATROSS. 



"During our stay in the months of November and December, the 

 Albatrosses were so busily employed in the work of incubation, as 

 to allow themselves to be caught without making an effort to escape. 

 Tt was an amusing scene to watch a group of these birds, a dozen or 

 more, assembled together on the side of a hill, grotesquely waddling 

 about, selecting their mates; this being settled, they dispersed, and 

 each pair fixed upon a spot for the nest, which consisted of a mound 

 of soil, intermingled with withered leaves and grass, the average 

 dimensions of which were found to be eighteen inches in height, 

 twenty-seven in diameter at the top, and six feet at the base. Like 

 the Petrels, with which genus they are nearly allied, they lay but 

 one egg, of a white colour, averaging seventeen ounces in weight. In 

 one nest only, out of at least a hundred examined, were found two 

 eggs, both of the full size, and one of them unusually elongated in its 

 longest diameter. When forced off the egg, it made a resolute defence, 

 snapping the mandibles of its beak sharply together in defiance." 



Their eggs are inferior to those of Geese, and they have less 

 yolk, and more white, in proportion to their size, weighing 

 generally about one pound and three-quarters. All birds of 

 the Albatross and Gull kind on these islands lay their eggs in 

 October, and when new laid they are a great source of refresh- 

 ment. Voyagers mention another large bird, called the Nelly- 

 bird, also a species of Albatross, of an unpleasing appearance, 

 and extremely voracious. Their fondness for blubber often 

 induces them to eat so much, that, like the gorged Gull we have 

 described, they are unable to fly. A flock, of perhaps five or 

 six hundred, have been known to devour twenty tons of sea- 

 elephant fat in six or eight hours — that is, upwards of seventy 

 pounds for each. The Albatross will, at one gulp, swallow a 

 salmon of four or five pounds weight ; but if more be taken, 

 and the whole will not go into the stomach, the bird is often 

 seen with the last hanging partly out of the mouth. We have 

 noticed (p. 371) the proportion of food consumed by a Cor- 

 morant, compared with the weight of the body, but its voracity- 

 is as nothing in comparison with that of the Nelly-bird, which 

 appears in the course of twenty-four hours to dispose of nearly 

 three times its own weight of food. 



The last genus of this tribe is that of the Petrels, six of 

 which are well known to us, as frequenters of our shores ; the 

 Fulmar, which is nearly as large as a Gull, and the Stormy 



