CHAPTER XXVII 

 THE FRIGATE BIRD 



IN dealing with this, the last of my Deep-Sea People, 

 I have unfortunately to cut across, I will not say 



many prevailing ideas, since the subject is not popu- 

 larly known, but many quasi-scientific ideas concerning 

 him. It is now many years since I read in a book 

 by Michelet, the French naturalist, a long rhapsody 

 on the Frigate Bird, most poetical, most beautiful 

 in diction, but alas, as is so common with French 

 scientists, pure imagination from beginning to end, 

 without the lightest substratum of fact. In spite of 

 my youth at the time and my innate reverence for the 

 written word, especially in a scientific treatise, I 

 knew that all Michelet said about the Frigate Bird 

 was wrong ; it would almost have been hyperbolical 

 to apply it to the wandering albatross, whose powerful 

 flight and endurance excel those of the Frigate, or 

 Man-of-War Bird, as much as those of the latter do 

 the powers of the sparrow. 



But the pity of it is that, as in so many other 

 cases, Michelet's absurdities have been perpetuated 

 in our own natural histories with that serene faith 

 in a writer's integrity manifested by Reingelder in 

 Yates's book, as described by Kipling in his wonderful 

 story of the German flag. Although warned by his 

 friend repeatedly, and his attention drawn to the 

 viperine head of the snake he held in his hand, Rein- 



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