388 S TORMY RE TREL. 



not only as the foreboding messengers of tempests and dangers 

 to the hapless mariner, but as wicked agents, connected, 

 somehow or other, in creating them. "Nobody," say they, 

 "can tell anything of where they come from or how they 

 breed, though (as sailors sometimes say) it is supposed that 

 they hatch their eggs under their wings as they sit on the 

 water." This mysterious uncertainty of their origin, and the 

 circumstances above recited, have doubtless given rise to the 

 opinion so prevalent among this class of men, that they are 

 in some way or other connected with that personage who has 

 been styled the Prince of the Power of the Air. In every 

 country where they are known, their names have borne some 

 affinity to this belief. They have been called Witches* 

 Stormy petrels, the Devils birds, Mother Carey s chickens,^ 

 probably from some celebrated ideal hag of that name ; and 

 their unexpected and numerous appearance has frequently 

 thrown a momentary damp over the mind of the hardiest 

 seaman. 



It is the business of the naturalist and the glory of philo- 

 sophy to examine into the reality of these things, to dissipate 

 the clouds of error and superstition wherever they begin to 

 darken and bewilder the human understanding, and to illustrate 

 nature with the radiance of truth. With these objects in 

 view, we shall now proceed, as far as the few facts we possess 

 will permit, in our examination into the history of this cele- 

 brated species. 



The stormy petrel, the least of the whole twenty-four 

 species of its tribe enumerated by ornithologists, and the 

 smallest of all palmated fowls, is found over the whole Atlantic 

 Ocean from Europe to North America, at all distances from 

 land, and in all weathers, but is particularly numerous near 

 vessels immediately preceding and during a gale, when flocks of 



* Arctic Zoology, p. 464. 



t This name seems to have been originally given them by Captain 

 Carteret's sailors, who met with these birds on the coast of Chili. See 

 Hawkesworth's Voyages, vol. i. p. 203. 



