THE BEA80N "WHY. 339 



He rained flesh upon them as dust, and feathered fowls like as the sand of the 

 sea." PSALM ixxvin. 



around the boat which conveys man to their domain, look curiously at him, and 

 vanish beneath the water to rise in his immediate neighbourly 3d. The black 

 guillemot comes close to the very oars. The seal stretches his head abive the 

 waves, not comprehending what has disturbed the repose of his asylum, whilo 

 (he rapacious skua pursues the puffin and gull. High in the air the birds seem 

 like bees clustering about the rocks, whilst lower they fly past so close that they 

 might be knocked down with a stick. But not less strange is the domicile of 

 this colony. On some low rocks scarcely projecting above the water sit the 

 glossy cormorants, turning their long necks on every side, Next are the skua 

 gulls, regarded with an anxious eye by the kittiwakes above. Nest follows nest 

 in crowded rows along the whole breadth of the rock, and nothing is visible but 

 the heads of the mothers and the white rocks between, A little higher on the 

 narrow shelves sit the guillemots and auks, arranged as on parade, with their 

 white breasts to the sea, and so close that a hailstone could not pass between 

 them. The puffins take the highest station, and, though scarcely visible, betray 

 themselves by their flying backwards and forwards. The noise of such a multi- 

 tude of birds is confounding, and in vain a person asks a question of his nearest 

 neighbour. The harsh tones of the kittiwakes are heard above the whole, the 

 intervals being filled with the monotonous note of the auk, and the softer voice 

 of the guillemot. When Graba, from whose travels this description is principally 

 drawn, visited the Vogel-berg, he was tempted by the sight of a crested cormo- 

 rant to fire a gun, but what became of it, he remarks, it was impossible to ascer- 

 tain. The air was darkened by the birds roused from their repose. Thousands 

 hastened out of the chasm with a frightful noise, and spread themselves over 

 the ocean. The puffins came wandering from their holes, and regarded the 

 universal confusion with comic gestures. The kittiwakes remained composedly 

 in their nests, whilst the cormorants tumbled headlong into the sea. Similar 

 great congregations of the feathered race appear where the shores are rocky 

 high, and precipitous, but this is strikingly the case, where 



" The northern ocean, in vast whirls, 



Boils round the naked melancholy isles 

 Of farthest Thule; and the Atlantic surge 

 Pours in among the stormy Hebrides. * 



Who can recount what transmigrations there 

 Are annual made ? what nations come and go? 

 f . And how the living clouds on clouds arise? 

 Infinite wings ! till all the plume-dark air 

 And rude resounding shore are one wild cry." 



1327. Most terrestrial birds, unacquainted with man, exhibit a remarkable 

 lameness, and are slow in acquiring a dread of him, even after repeated lessons 

 that danger is to be apprehended from his neighbourhood. Mr. Darwin speaks 

 of a gun as almost superfluous in the unfrequented districts of South America, 

 for with its muzzle he pushed a hawk off the branch of a tree. Once, while 

 lying down, a mocking thrush alighted on the edge of a pitcher, made of the 

 shell of a tortoise, which he was holding in his hand, and began very leisurely to 

 sip the water, even allowing him to handle it while seated on the vessel. In 

 Charles Island, which had been colonised aDout six years, he saw a boy sitting 

 by a well with a switch in his hand, with which he killed the doves and finches 

 as they came to drink ; and for some time had been constantly in the habit 

 of waiting by the well for the same purpose, to provide himself with his .Inmers. 

 In the Falkland Islands, at Bourbou, and at Tristan d'Acunlxa, the same tamo- 



