264 NATATORES. 



its hunger appeased, and then dashing onward with reno- 

 vated speed to explore the Arctic lands with quicker, more 

 certain, and more extensive range, than human navigators. 

 Its " march is " over, rather than " on the mountain wave," 

 and " its home " is the land to our feelings, a dismal and a 

 dreary land, but still the appropriate and chosen land of the 

 bird, and not upon " the deep." 



Various birds of the order Grallse also are land, or rather 

 fresh-water birds, and when the treasures of the north are 

 sealed up by the rigour of the winter, some species make their 

 way to our fens, marshes, and lakes, and many more to our 

 estuaries, creek, and shores ; but still the general character 

 of the order is germain to the sea. Their forms are boat- 

 like ; their plumage is proof against humidity and cold no 

 rain mats, and no wind ruffles it ; their feet are paddles, or 

 oars ; their whole air is marine, and their very voices are 

 tuned, if tuned it can be called, to the wailing wind, the 

 thundering surge, or the hissing foam. 



The number of these birds is vast. There is hardly a lone 

 rock in the ocean, or a small islet just lifting its head above 

 the water, but which, in the breeding season, is so thickly 

 peopled with them, that it alone might seem to be tlie city of 

 the sea birds. On some of the remotest of our own islets, one 

 can hardly, at that season, plant a foot without breaking an 

 egg, and the clouds of parent birds actually thicken the 

 atmosphere, and hide the sun. The cliffs, too, those gigantic 

 barriers which nature has set to the driving of the winds and 

 the dash of the waters, are tenanted in every cranny and 

 crevice ; and when one thinks of St. Kilda, and even of many 

 points of the bold shores that are nearer and more accessible, 

 one is almost tempted to fancy that nature has thus reared 

 them, and rifted them with breaches and fissures, because the 

 level surfaces of the shores are not sufficient nesting-room for 

 the sea birds. 



