178 THE OCEAN. 
waste is enlivened by those cheerful little birds, the 
Petrels (Procellaria pelagica), the constant com- 
panions of the sailor, by whom they are familiarly 
named Mother Carey’s chickens. They are pecu- 
liarly Ocean-birds: rarely approaching the shore, 
except when they seek gloomy and inaccessible rocks 
for the purpose of breeding; they are never seen but 
in association with the boundless waste of waters. 
Scarcely larger than the swallow that darts through 
our streets, one wonders that so frail a little bird 
should brave the fury of the tempest; but when the 
masts are cracking, and the cordage shrieking fit- 
fully in the fierce blast, and when the sea is leaping 
up into mountainous waves, whose foaming crests 
are torn off in invisible mist before the violence of 
the gale, the little Petrel flits hither and thither, 
now treading the brow of the watery hill, now 
sweeping through the valley, piping its singular note 
with as much glee as if it were the very spirit of the 
storm, which the superstitious mariner, indeed, attri- 
butes to its evil agency. Flocks of these little birds, 
more or less numerous, accompany ships, often for 
“many days successively, not, as has been asserted, 
to seek a refuge from the storm in their shelter, 
but to feed on the greasy particles which the cook 
now and then throws overboard, or the floating sub- 
stances which the vessel’s motion brings to the sur- 
face. It is a pleasing sight to see them crowd up 
close under the stern with confiding fearlessness, 
their sooty wings horizontally extended, and their 
tiny web-feet put down to feel the water, while they 
pick up with their beaks the minute atoms of food 
