358 Cape Pigeons and Whale Birds 



merchant sailing ship, hardly ever from a steamer. 

 The first may be accompanied until the breeze freshens, 

 when the bird, apparently disliking the speed, quietly 

 melts into the vast emptiness around ; the second 

 poisons the surrounding atmosphere so vilely that any 

 bird, to say nothing of the dignified bos'un, would find 

 it an impossibility to retain even the semblance of 

 fellowship and live. Except of course those busy 

 birds that fly low, and keeping thus out of the befouled 

 strata of air are able for a time to gather a little of the 

 rich harvest of eatable scraps being whirled astern in 

 the foaming eddy of the propeller. 



I am exceedingly loth to leave the Tropic Bird, as 

 he possesses for me a fascination greater than that of 

 any other of the deep-sea birds. But he does so 

 persistently and successfully maintain his aloofness, 

 his mysterious independence of all those external aids 

 to living which we must look for in the creatures we 

 study, that unless I were to invent something about 

 him I must come to an end of my talk about his ways. 

 The question of how he breeds, and how — unless he 

 builds a nest in a tree, as suggested by some naturalists, 

 but which is to me a thing unthinkable of a sea-bird — 

 he protects that long beautiful tail of his from defile- 

 ment is an unsolvable mystery to me. 



Undoubtedly there is a species of Tropic Bird 

 which breeds, petrel-like, in holes of the rocks, and while 

 ashore is gregarious, but it is not the species of which 

 I am now writing. Perhaps it is well that there should 

 remain even to-day some creatures of the upper air 

 whom the lonely sailor can meet and admire, whose 

 comings and goings are without observation, whose 

 habits can only be guessed at, and whose lives, as far 

 as may be seen, are from their beginning to their end 

 bound up in the enjoyment of perfect unmolested peace. 



