110 DIVISION I. VERTEBRAL ANIMALS.—CLASS II. AVES. 
ORDER LONGIPENNES. LONG-WINGED BIRDS. 
Tus group, though not one of the largest, is, nevertheless, quite inter- 
esting. It consists of the two families, Laride, the Gulls, and Procellari- 
die, the Petrels. 
Famity Procettarip&®. Tur ALBATROSSES AND PETRELS. 
The common Albatross is the largest sea-bird known: it is often met 
with in the southern seas. Its food, as with the others, consists of fish, 
which it has been known to eat to the extent of five pounds at a meal. 
“These birds do not confine themselves entirely to fish, but will prey on 
other sea-animals. The Kamtschatkadales take them by fastening a cord to 
a large hook, baited with a whole fish, which the birds greedily seize.” 
Of the Petrels, the Stormy Petrel is the most interesting. The power 
of wing of this bird is so great that it is enabled to sweep over the ocean, at 
every distance from land, and even to weather the most tempestuous winds, 
while, with its webbed feet and light form, it can actually walk upon the 
billows with as much ease as a sparrow can hop alone a garden walk. “It 
is, indeed, an interesting sight,” says Wilson, “to observe these little birds, 
in a gale, coursing over the waves, down the declivities, and up the ascents 
of the foaming surf that threatens to burst over their heads, sweeping along 
the hollow troughs of the sea, as in a sheitered valley, and again mounting 
with the rising billow, and just above its surface occasionally dropping their 
feet, which, striking the water, throw them up again with additional force, 
sometimes leaping, with both legs parallel, on the surface of the roughest 
wayes for several yards at a time. Meanwhile they continue coursing from 
side to side of the ship’s wake, making excursions far and wide to the right 
and to the left, now a great way ahead, and now shooting astern for several 
hundred yards, returning again to the ship as if she were all the while sta- 
tionary, though perhaps running at the rate of ten knots an hour. But the 
most singular peculiarity of this bird is its faculty of standing, and even 
running, on the surface of the water, which it performs with apparent 
facility. When any greasy matter is thrown overboard, these birds in- 
stantly collect around it, facing to windward, with their long wings 
expanded, and their webbed feet patting the water. The lightness of their 
bodies, and the action of the wind on their wings, enable them with ease to 
assume this position. In calm weather they perform the same manouvre 
by keeping their wings just so much in action as to prevent their feet from 
sinking below the surface.” 
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