296 



NATATORES. 



and floes of the polar ice, the rotche is a very abundant, and 

 by no means an uninteresting bird. It combines, with equal 

 facility, the three motions of flying, swimming, and diving, 

 though it does not appear to perform the latter to so great a 

 depth, or in water so troubled, as the guillemots and the 

 divers properly so called. It is found flying about in large 

 flocks ; these flocks are often captured in considerable num- 

 bers by the crews of ships upon distant northward voyages, 

 and they are much relished in those dreary seas, as not having 

 the rank and fishy flavour so general among the birds that 

 are found there. The crews of some of the discovery ships 

 caught them in vast multitudes, and made them into soup, 

 which they represented as more resembling hare soup than 

 anything else. 



These birds indeed form a curious feature in arctic orni- 

 thology ; for though they are decidedly sea-birds, or perhaps, 

 to speak more strictly, ice-birds, in their locality, they form a 

 sort of connecting link between the other sea-birds and those 

 land-birds which inhabit the northern mountains on the con- 

 fines of the ice and snow. They resemble these in the form 

 of their bills, and also in the flavour of their flesh ; and 

 although they seek their food in the same waters with the 

 proper divers, both the form of the bill and the flavour of the 

 flesh lead us to conclude that that food is different. That it 

 really is so, has not been accurately ascertained ; but whatever 

 it may be, it must, from the great multitudes of the birds, 

 and the circumstance of their not migrating to any very 

 great distance southward, be very plentiful, and found at all 

 seasons. The circumstance of their moving southward in 

 the winter, when the other divers are supposed to move 

 northward, is another peculiarity in their character. Some 

 of them remain on the remoter shores of our more northerly 

 islands to breed ; but the number of these is small compared 

 with those that are seen during the winter ; the number of 



