224 BRITISH BIRDS. 



varied hollow sounds of a number of frogs. They 

 are accounted a stupid race of birds, because they 

 seem fearless of danger, and suifer themselves to 

 be so nearly approached as easily to be shot, or 

 even knocked on the head. In the preservation of 

 their young they seem to have only one mode of 

 defence, and that is the singular faculty of squirt- 

 ing oil from their bills, with great force, on the 

 face of their enemy; by which means they some- 

 times succeed in disconcerting his attempts to rob 

 their nests. They are a remarkably oily fat race of 

 birds. Late writers have subdivided this genus 

 into three sections, termed the Petrels, properly so 

 called, the Puffin Petrels, and the Swallow Petrels ; 

 the position of the nostrils, and the form of the 

 bill, constituting the principal ground of these 

 distinctions. 



