BIRDS. 



445 



following a ship is very large, sometimes mounting up into the hundreds. 

 At night, looking over the stern, a few can frequently be seen; but noth- 

 ing like the numbers visible during the day. So, too, in the early morning, 

 but few are visible ; but the numbers rapidly increase as the day wears on. 

 Birds have been caught, daubed with paint, and then set loose, to be 

 recognized following the ship for several days. The probable view is that 

 the birds, after dark, settle down on the water to rest, and with the 

 morning's dawn they 

 mount to a height of 

 some hundreds of feet. 

 "A height of one thou- 

 sand feet would enable 

 a bird to see a ship two 

 hundred feet high, more 

 than fifty miles off ; and 

 often, although unable 

 to see a ship itself, it 

 would see another bird 

 which had evidently dis- 

 covered one, and would 

 follow it in the same 

 way that vultures are 

 known to follow each other." In this way it might regain the same ship 

 it followed the day before, or again, it might get sight of another one, 

 and so lose the first entirely. 



There are several species of albatrosses. The largest is the wandering 

 albatross, the wings of which sometimes spread fourteen feet. Much 

 smaller are our northern species. All, however, afford much sport to the 

 traveler, tired by the monotony of a long voyage. A hook baited with 

 pork is thrown over the stern into the wake of the ship, and soon an alba- 

 tross is caught and hauled to the deck, where every particle of its native 

 grace disappears, and the bird appears the perfect picture of awkwardness, 

 as it is utterly unfitted for locomotion on a hard, flat surface like a ship's 

 deck. 



Near the albatrosses comes the long series of petrels, which vary in 

 size from the small ' Mother Carey's chickens,' scarcely six inches long, 

 to the giant fulmar three feet in length. All of them live on the high 

 seas, and many of them will follow a ship just as do the albatrosses. 

 They, too, are regarded with a superstitious reverence by the sailors, 

 and sure disaster must follow any injury to any of these birds. The 

 little ' Mother Carey's chickens ' are especially the friends of the sailor ; 



Fig. 376. — Sooty albatross {Diomedea fully inosa). 



