164 PROCELLARIA PELAGICA. 



prefer the neighbourhood of the coast for the purpose 

 of breeding. They retire southward early in autumn. 



GENUS LXIV. PROCELLARIA, LINNJJWJ. 



263. FROCBLLAR1A PELAOICA, LINN.CUS. 



STORMY PETREL. 

 WILSON, PLATE LX. FIG. VI. EDINBURGH COLLEGK 



THERE are few persons who have crossed the Atlantic, 

 or traversed much of the ocean, who have not observed 

 these solitary wanderers of the deep, skimming along 

 the surface of the wild and wasteful ocean, flitting past 

 the vessel like swallows, or following in her wal% 

 gleaning their scanty pittance of food from the rough 

 and whirling surges. Habited in mourning, and making 

 their appearance generally in greater numbers previ<u> 

 to or during a storm, they have long been fearfully 

 regarded by the ignorant and superstitious, not only 

 as the foreboding messengers of tempests and dangers 

 to the hapless mariner, but as wicked agents, connected, 

 somehow or other, in creating them. " Nobody," say 

 they, " can tell any thing of where they come from, 

 or how they breed, though, as sailors sometimes say, 

 it is supposed that they hatch their eggs under their 

 wings as they sit on the water." This mysterious un- 

 certainty of their origin, and the circumstances above 

 recited, have doubtless given rise to the opinion so 

 prevalent among this class of men, that they are in 

 some way or other connected with that personage who 

 has been styled the Prince of the Power of the Air. 

 In every country where they are known, their names 

 have borne some affinity to this belief. They have 

 been called witches,* stormy petrels, the devil's birds, 

 Mother Carey's chickens, -j- probably from some cele- 

 brated ideal nag of that name ; and their unexpected 



* Arctic Zoology, p. 464. 



f This name seems to have been originally given them by Captain 

 Carteret's sailors, who met with these birds on the coast of Chili. 

 See HAWKESWORTH'S Voyages, vol. i, p. 203. 



