YOUNG BIRDS IN THE NURSERY 85 



colonies an unavoidable necessity. The sooty-grey chicks 

 in the third week in January, Dr. Wilson tells us, were 

 almost as big as their parents, and quite as active ; they 

 swarmed in thousands, and all were hungry, many very 

 hungry. 



" Moreover, each individual chicken acted on the 

 assumption that every old bird, as it came from shore, was 

 full of shrimps. On this assumption it had no choice but 

 to run the gauntlet. Chased incontinently ... by the 

 unfortunate infants, the fond parent ran hither and thither 

 with a keen eye for the chicken it had once called its own. 

 Driven at last to bay, it could only turn to swear, and 

 silence its persecutii^g followers, for the moment, with 

 a vicious peck ; but the moment its search again com- 

 menced it would be caught up and followed and worried 

 in precisely the same way by a fresh relay of young ones, 

 all belonging to some one else. . . . The more robust of 

 the young thus worried an adult until, because of this 

 importunity, he was fed. But with the less robust a 

 much more pathetic ending was the rule. 



" A chick that had fallen behind in this literal race for 

 life, starving and weak, getting daily weaker because it 

 could not run fast enough to insist on being fed, again and 

 again ran off, pursuing with the rest. Again and again 

 it stumbled and fell, persistently whining out its hunger 

 in a shrill and melancholy pipe, till at last the race was 

 given up. Forced thus by sheer exhaustion to stop and 

 rest, it had no chance of getting food. Each hurrying 

 parent, with its little following of hungry chicks, intent 

 on one thing only, rushed quickly by, and the starveling 

 dropped behind to gather strength for one more effort. 

 Again it fails, a robuster bird has forced the pace, and 

 again success is wanting to the ' runt.' Sleepily it stands 



