THE PETRELS. reg 
“There are,” says the same writer in another place, “few persons who 
have crossed the Atlantic that have not observed these solitary wanderers 
of the deep, skimming along the surface of the wild and wasteful ocean ; 
flitting past the vessel like swallows, or following in her wake, leaning their 
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scanty pittance of food from the rough and whirling surges. Habited in 
mourning, and making their appearance generally in greater numbers pre- 
vious to, or during, a storm, they have long been fearfully regarded by the 
ignorant and superstitious not only as the foreboding messengers of tempests 
and dangers to the hapless mariner, but as wicked agents, connected, some- 
how or other, in creating them. ‘Nobody,’ say they, ‘can tell anything of 
where they come from, or how they breed, though (as sailors sometimes 
say) it is supposed that they hatch their eggs under their wings as they sit 
on the water.’ This mysterious uncertainty of their origin, and the circum- 
stances above recited, have doubtless given rise to the opinion, so prevalent 
among this class of men, that they are in some way or other connected with 
the prince of the power of the air. In every country where they are known, 
their names have borne some affinity to this belief. They have been called 
Witches, Stormy Petrels, the Devil’s Birds, and Mother Cary’s Chickens, * 
probably from some celebrated ideal hag of that name; and their unex- 
pected and numerous appearance has frequently thrown a momentary damp 
over the minds of the hardiest seamen. It is the business of the naturalist, 
and the glory of philosophy, to examine into the reality of these things, to 
dissipate the clouds of error and superstition wherever they darken and be- 
wilder the human understanding, and to illustrate nature with the radiance 
of truth.” 
When we inquire, accordingly, into the unvarnished history of this omi- 
nous bird, we find that it is by no means peculiar in presaging storms, for 
many others, of very different families, are evidently endowed with an 
equally nice perception of a change in the atmosphere. Hence it is that, 
before rain, swallows are seen more eagerly hawking for flies, and ducks 
carefully trimming their feathers, and tossing up water over their backs to 
try whether it will run off again without wetting them. But it would be as 
absurd to accuse the swallows and ducks on that account of being the cause 
of rain, as to impute a tempest to the spiteful malice of the poor Petrels. 
Seamen ought rather to be thankful to them for the warning which their 
delicate feelings of aerial change enable them to give of an approaching 
hurricane. 
“As well,” says Wilson, “might they curse the midnight lighthouse, that, 
star-like, guides them on their watery way, or the buoy that warns them of 
* This name seems to have been originally given them by Captain Carteret’s sailors, who 
met with these birds on the coast of Chili. 
