240 



TUBE-NOSED SWIMMERS OF MID-OCEAN 



cause for surprise is that so small and weak a creature — the 

 smallest of all the web-footed birds, no larger and seemingly 

 no stronger than a cat-bird — should live on the watery wastes 

 of a landless ocean, eating, sleeping and enjoying literally "a 

 life on the ocean wave, and a home on the rolling deep." 



^e.^>vt-r^ -asv»- " 



Drawn by J. Carter Beard. 



STORMY PETREL. 



Even when seas are calm and skies are clear, one cannot 

 easily imagine how this creature can live and find its food. 

 But when a prolonged storm sets in, and for ten days or two 

 weeks at a stretch the surface of the sea is a seething, boiling 

 caldron, with every wave a ragged "white-cap" and every 

 square foot of the sea fretted like a fish-net by the force of the 

 wind, how does the frail little Stormy Petrel survive? 



You nearly always see this bird in the trough of the sea, 

 skimming so low that its feet can paddle upon the surface of 



