ORNITHOLOGICAL EAMBLES. 91 



under Sir Edward Parry, which immediately disgorged 

 a little auk or Greenland dove (Alca alle), and, on 

 opening him, another was discovered still undigested. 

 I would wish to have enlarged upon this bird to a 

 much greater extent, but this being the first and only 

 specimen I have met with, I have had hitherto no 

 opportunity of studying it as minutely as I could have 

 wished. It gives me an indescribable sense of pleasure 

 to observe these free happy fellows dividing the liquid 

 air with their long expansive wings with easy gliding 

 sweep. " No human ingenuity or skill could ever have 

 devised so perfect an instrument as the bird's wing for 

 its intended purpose : so light and yet so powerful ; so 

 spacious when spread out, and yet so compact, and 

 gathered into so small a compass when not wanted. 

 We may form some idea of the extraordinary strength 

 of a bird, from knowing that the great muscle which 

 chiefly regulates the movements of its wing weighs 

 more than all the other muscles of its body put 

 together, constituting not less than one-sixth part of 

 the whole body ; whereas those of the human body are 

 not one-hundredth part as large in proportion."* 



There is scarcely anything that, to my mind, so 

 effectually realises a state of existence completely 

 divested of sordid, selfish carthliness as the observing a 

 being resting or moving in airy space, self-sustaining, 

 self-reliant. There is something ethereal, almost 

 * Stanley's " Birds." 



