LAND-BIRDS IN MID-OCEAN. 207 



limit themselves to a lunch and a good dinner, drink a liberal quantum 

 of fresh, cold spring- water, but no fermented beverage, and strictly 

 abstain from indigestible food, especially cheese, sour rye-bread, sauer- 

 kraut, archaic sausages, pickles, and hard-boiled eggs. Light bread, 

 cream, and grapes (or baked apples), should constitute the staple of the 

 diet. A two-weeks grape-cure can do harm. An occasional fast-day 

 will insure the elimination of undigested food-deposits. Pin-worms 

 that have escaped the day of wrath may now and then betray their 

 presence, but they have ceased to multiply, and, after the current of 

 the organic circulation has once been fairly re-established, intestinal 

 parasites will disappear like the wrigglers of a drained river-pool. 



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A 



LA^D-BIKDS IK MID-OCEAK. 



By GEORGE W. GRIM. 



THE appearance of some of the smaller varieties of migratory birds, 

 such as sparrows, swallows, doves, etc., several hundred miles away 

 from the nearest land is by no means an unusual occurrence on the 

 ocean. About these little erratic visitors there are some curious and 

 interesting facts. Their appearance is almost always one at a time, 

 though I have known a considerable number, representing, perhaps, as 

 many different varieties, to accumulate in the course of a day. It is 

 usually, though not always, in stormy or unsettled weather. 



The first curious fact about these birds is, that they never appear 

 to be tired out ; whereas birds are often met with near the land with 

 their strength quite exhausted. A second curious fact about them is 

 their preternatural tameness where there is no cat or dog on board, 

 and the crew show no disposition to molest them, as exhibited by their 

 apparently seeking rather than avoiding the presence of man. 



Another curious fact about them is the recovery of all their native 

 wildness and their instinctive avoidance of man's presence on ap- 

 proaching the land. The first time I noticed this fact was with a 

 pair of olive-colored ring-doves, which, from their remarkable tame- 

 ness and familiarity, I was led to believe had been bred in a domestic 

 state and perhaps on shipboard. I kept them in the skylight in the 

 cabin, where they seemed to be quite contented ; but on approach- 

 ing the land they became the wildest of the wild. One of them es- 

 caped and flew away. I succeeded in taking the other into port, where 

 I gave it its liberty. Now, I am certain that these birds could not 

 have been apprised of the approach to the land through the medium 

 of any of their ordinary senses. This curious circumstance led me to 

 notice more particularly the conduct of other varieties of these little 



