162 



THE INHABITANTS OP THE SEA. 



upon the drift ice. Thus nature has set bounds to petrels, as to 

 all other creatures that swim or fly in and over the ocean, and 

 has divided the wide deserts of the sea among their different 

 species. Who can tell us the mysterious laws which assign to 

 each of them its limits ? Who can show us the invisible barriers 

 they are not allowed to pass ? 



The Stormy Petrel (P. pdagica) seems to belong to every 

 sea. It is about the size of a swallow, and in its general ap- 



Stormy Petrel, 



pearance and flight is not unlike that bird. Although the smallest 

 web-footed bird known, it braves the utmost fury of the tempest, 

 often skimming with incredible velocity the trough of the waves, 

 and sometimes gliding rapidly over their snowy crests. Like all 

 of its kind, it lives almost constantly at sea, and seeks during 

 the breeding season some lonely rock, where it deposits in some 

 fissure or crevice its solitary egg. 



The mode of life of the petrels corresponds but little with 

 their external beauty ; they are in fact the crows of the ocean, 

 and live upon the dead animal substances floating on its surface. 

 Wherever the carcase of a whale, borne along by the current, 

 covers' the sea with a long stripe of putrid oil, they are seen 

 feasting in the polluted waters. All petrels have the remarkable 

 faculty of spouting oil of a very offensive smell, from their 

 nostrils when alarmed, and this apparently as a means of 

 defence. 



The Albatross (Diomedea exulcms) is the monarch of the high 

 seas ; the picture of a hero, who, under every storm of adverse 

 fortune, preserves the immoveable constancy of an undaunted 

 heart. Proud and majestic, he swims along in his own native 



