i4 THE POLE. 
costume of white and black, imagined them to be bands of children 
in white aprons! The stiffness of their small arms—one can scarcely 
call them wings in these rudimentary birds—their awkwardness on 
land, their difficulty of movement, prove that they belong to the 
ocean, where they swim with wonderful ease, and which is their 
natural and legitimate element. One might speak of them as its 
emancipated eldest sons, as ambitious fishes, candidates for the char- 
acters of birds, which had already progressed so far as to transform 
their fins into scaly pinions. The metamorphosis was not attended 
with complete success; as birds powerless and clumsy, they remain 
skilful fishes. 
Or again, with their large feet attached so near to the body, with 
their neck short or poised on a great cylindrical trunk, with their 
flattened head, one might judge them to be near relations of their 
neighbours the seals, whose kindly nature they possess, but not their 
intelligence. 
These eldest sons of nature, eye-witnesses of the ancient ages of 
transformation, appeared like so many strange hieroglyphics to those 
who first beheld them. With eyes mild, but sad and pale as the 
face of ocean, they seemed to regard man, the last-born of the planet, 
from the depths of their antiquity. 
