Its Restless Vivacity 351 



absolute necessity, considering the rapidity with which 

 it must seize its shmy food. Its plumage is just white 

 and black, white as regards the bulk of the body, breast, 

 neck, etc., with a curiously regular and conventional 

 pattern of black across the upper part of the wings 

 and body. Its head is like a ball of black velvet, its 

 feet are like the wings of a little bat, so silky and 

 nervously energetic are they. 



Like all its congeners, and for the same reason, 

 it eats whatever it can get that is eatable — that is 

 to say, eatable in its very wide ideas of what constitutes 

 really edible food. It samples everything, rejecting 

 only that which is obviously impossible, like wood or 

 pumice-stone, of which latter produce of submarine 

 fires there is often abundance floating in Southern 

 Seas. But its chief characteristic is its cheery vivacity. 

 In lovableness I cannot give it the place of honour, 

 when I remember the little darling of all the wide 

 oceans, the Mother Carey's chicken, but it is a close 

 second. And I am filled with sorrow when I remember 

 how many I have seen caught or wantonly shot by 

 passengers for amusement. The necessity could never 

 arise, except in case of shipwreck and consequent 

 starvation, for these deep-sea birds are all practically 

 uneatable except when overpowering hunger compels. 

 Their flesh is rank, oily, and hard, the muscles being 

 indurated by their amazingly active life. 



The Whale Birds, so-called from an utterly un- 

 founded superstition among the whale-fishers that 

 their appearance in large flocks heralds the approach 

 or the immediate vicinity of whales, are almost mys- 

 terious in their aloofness from man. Whereas the 

 albatross, the mollymauk, Cape hen, and Mother 

 Carey's chicken, with especially the Cape pigeon, act 

 towards passing ships as if they too realised intensely 



