424 DANGERS OF A CALM. [CHAP. xii. 



band in, and the sailors prepared the carcasses in a dish 

 called 'sea-pie.'"* 



The Albatross, it appears, is safe in the storm, but 

 helpless when becalmed ; a fact bearing the same moral 

 application as Hannibal's Capuan defeat and the fable 

 of the Sun and the North Wind. When our Albatrosses 

 shall have been surprised in their moments of ease and 

 indolence, Mr. Gould points out the kind of sustenance 

 they require, though any sort of fish diet would pro- 

 bably suit them. " It is but natural to suppose that 

 this great group of birds has been created for some especial 

 purpose, and may we not infer that they have been 

 placed in the Southern Ocean to prevent an undue in- 

 crease of the myriads of mollusks and other low marine 

 animals with which those seas abound, and upon which 

 all the Procellarida mainly subsist ? " 



That the Albatross with its great wings should be 

 less able to rise from a level surface than a Pheasant 

 or a Partridge with their short ones, is a paradox of 

 easy explanation. All those birds that sail in the air 

 with little or no visible motion of the pinions are sus- 

 tained on high upon exactly the same principle as a 

 boy's kite (whence in fact its name). Short-winged 

 birds, such as the Gallinacea, are utterly incapable of this 

 sort of kite-like floating upon the waves of the atmo- 

 sphere ; the wind drops, and down comes the kite, and 

 so would the long-winged bird, if it did not alter its 

 usual mode of flying. The horizontal force of the wind 

 (represented by w K) resisted indirectly by the tension 

 of the string KS, is resolved into a perpendicular force 

 s w, which supports the weight of the kite, and keeps it 



* Wakefield's Adventure in New Zealand, p. 20. 



