MOTHER CAREY'S CHICKENS 197 



" Up and down! Up and down! 

 From the base of the wave to the billow's crown." 



I have not only seen him now, I have also fol- 

 lowed him to his sea-cliff and pulled him out of 

 his tame little hole of a burrow. Here was his 

 nest, where I might make mine. His nest, but 

 this was not his home, for back come the lines — 



" And midst the flashing and feathery foam, 

 The stormy petrel finds a home." 



The poetry got in ahead of the ornithology. I 

 am glad it did; for that is the happier order, I 

 think ; just as I am glad that we have our youth 

 before our old age. One who is young first stands 

 an excellent chance of never growing entirely old. 

 And so with poems and facts. There are many 

 kinds of petrels, I am reminded by my ornithol- 

 ogist critic. In deference to him I have changed 

 "stormy" several times so as to conform to the 

 facts — Kaeding^ for instance, is the petrel on 

 Three-Arch Rocks in the Pacific, the stormy 

 ("storm" alas! by the latest A.O.U. Check-List) 

 petrel being an Atlantic bird nesting on the Euro- 

 pean side and only a rare wanderer to our shores. 

 "Kaeding's" is the petrel of this chapter; accord- 



