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ORDER XIII. 

 NATATORES. 



SWIMMING BIRDS. 



THE birds of this order bring to our contemplation the 

 characters of a new, a wide, and a wonderful field the world 

 of waters. Many of the last order may be considered as in 

 fact water birds, and some of the species can not only swim, 

 but swim well, and are far discursive over the ocean, resting, 

 if need be, on its surface, and thence again arising refreshed 

 for their journey. The phalarope, for instance, which comes 

 straggling to our shores in the winter, pauses to breakfast 

 with the whale in the lee of an iceberg, as it is on its 

 journey to those regions where, during half the year, water 

 becomes both the home and the harvest-field of the few 

 human beings who inhabit wretchedly, though not dis- 

 mally, on the extreme confine of existence. But still, 

 though the phalarope can "take shelter" on the sea such 

 shelter as an ice-berg and an angry wave afford when 

 caught in those violent gusts and storms in which the 

 winter and the summer contend upon those seas, and though 

 it can " keep the life there," by picking up the small crus- 

 tacea, mollusca, and radiata, with which the water of the all- 

 productive deep is so replete, yet there the phalarope is 

 only a way-faring bird, pausing till its wings are rested, and 



