420 THE KING OF THE GULLERY. [CHAP. xii. 



Swan on the lake. No living Albatross, that I can 

 learn, has ever reached this country ; but the distance 

 from the Cape is not so great but what we may entertain 

 hopes of receiving his Oceanic Majesty, and, by all 

 means, his imperial consort likewise, with a party of 

 their royal offspring and relatives. Which is the king 

 of the Albatrosses, among the numerous rival claimants 

 to the throne (Mr. Gould says there are at least forty 

 different species peculiar to the seas of the southern 

 hemisphere), naturalists have not yet been able to 

 decide. Any of them would be welcome, whether the 

 expanse of their extended wings reached to the regal 

 breadth of 1& or 15 feet, or only to the aristocratical 

 measure of 9 or 10. With such instruments of loco- 

 motion, we may believe Mr. Gould when he tells us, 

 that " The powers of flight with which these birds are 

 endowed, are perfectly astonishing, and they appear to 

 be constantly performing migrations round the globe 

 from west to east ; and Australia lying in their track, all 

 the species may be found near its shores at one or other 

 season of the year."* The globe, it may be re- 

 membered, is not quite so thick round in those parts as 

 at the equator, but still it is a very tolerable circuit for 

 them to make. They are very easily taken prisoners, 

 and do not give quite the same trouble to catch as did 

 the king and queen of the Auks to Mr. Bullock and his 

 boat's company of stout rowers. " In February, one of 

 the Albatrosses was brought to me, upon which I could 

 not discover the slightest wound. On inquiring how 

 it was caught, I was answered, by the hand. Upon a 

 further investigation into the matter, I was assured by 



* Introduction to the Birds of Australia, p. 114. 



