3 66 



PETRELS IN STORMY SEAS. 



and waves than the most powerful ship which has 

 ever been constructed by engineering skill. As we 

 know the mightiest steamships are all of them more 

 or less dependent upon the weather, not only for the 

 punctual performance of their passages, but also for 

 their security, and in extreme cases, even for their 

 very existence. Whereas the little sea-bird, as it 

 wheels about, seems absolutely to rejoice in the fury 

 of the gale, and can ride in safety, with cork -like 

 buoyancy, upon the crests of the angriest seas. 



It has always seemed to us that in the whole 

 economy of terrestrial Nature, there are few, if any 

 finer examples of the triumph of creative skill, in 

 adapting certain forms of life to fill a certain end, 

 than we here see exhibited in the sea-bird's victory 

 over the violence of the storm during exceptionally 

 rough weather. In the great southern ocean, which 

 enwraps the circumference of the globe in that region, 

 we have often noticed during heavy weather flights 

 of tiny birds of the petrel tribe, not much larger than 

 a snipe, as we have said, skimming along the waves 

 as merrily as if the profoundest calm prevailed, while 

 small gulls and other sea-birds, generally not ex- 

 ceeding a pound or two in weight, circled round over 

 whose powers of movement the fiercest gale has no 

 power at all, either to hinder or to daunt. And then, 

 compare this on the other hand with steamships of 

 thousands of tons burden, worked by gigantic machinery 

 sometimes tens of thousands of horse power (nominal 

 force) 'battling with the waves, whose rude blows cause 

 her to shiver all over, like a thing of life in its agony, 

 while its huge frame pitches, and strains, and its decks 

 are swept by green seas from end to end: all these 



