138 GENERAL REMARKS ON SOUTHERN COAST 



on the backs of floating turtles, which also seemed to be 

 asleep. Yet these birds (and no doubt albatrosses) roost 

 on rocks when at home. As I have said above gulls are 

 great wanderers, and I am convinced that the albatross is 

 not the only species that spends many days at a time on 

 the open sea without a visit to the land. 



I have not collected as much information as I should 

 like to possess concerning the food of the albatross, but I 

 am convinced that it is a sea-scavanger, a marine vulture, 

 preying on any garbage it can find, or that is thrown to it 

 from a ship. It will pounce eagerly on the entrails of a 

 fowl thrown overboard to it, or on a dead fish or piece of 

 salt-junk, or bit of biscuit — in a word, on anything eatable; 

 but no sailor that I have conversed with has ever seen 

 an albatross catch a fish for itself, and as I have watched 

 them for hours at a time wheeling and sailing, rather than 

 flying, over the surface of waters that I knew were 

 swarming with fish, I am convinced that they do not catch 

 living prey. I once amused myself by throwing dead rats 

 to some ravenous albicores which were following the ship, 

 when an albatross, which was also attendant on us, made 

 several attempts to obtain a rat, but displayed an amusing 

 caution in avoiding contact with the albicores. Whether 

 these ravenous fishes would, or could, seize a bird of the 

 size of the albatross I do not know ; but the albatross 

 was evidently disinclined to run the risk of such a fate. 



The albicore, like the shark, is one of the few fishes 

 which can be caught by hook and line trailed behind a 

 rapidly sailing ship ; and on the occasion referred to, no 

 fewer than fourteen of them, most of them weighing over 

 thirty pounds each, were hauled aboard, and the garbage 

 from all these found its way into the hungry maw of the 

 bird. The actual weight of the food consumed by the bird, 

 in the course of a couple of hours, I cannot state, but it 

 could not be less than six or seven pounds — that is about 

 half its own weight. For these birds, notwithstanding 

 their great expanse of wing (often ten or eleven feet) and 

 great apparent size, seldom weigh more than fourteen or 

 fifteen pounds. Digestion is performed very quickly by 



