364 



PETREL. 



overboard, for they will stoop and pick up bits of biscuit and meat. It 

 is supposed to be seen only before stormy weather, and of course not a 

 welcome visitor to the sailors. 



" It is the business of the naturalist," says Wilson, " and the glory 

 of philosophy, to examine into the reality of these things ; to dissipate 

 the clouds of error and superstition whenever they begin to darken and 

 bewilder the human understanding, and to illustrate Nature with the 

 radiance of truth. 



" When we inquire accordingly into the unvarnished history of this 

 ominous bird, we find that it is by no means peculiar in presaging 

 storms, as many others of very different families are evidently endowed 

 with a more nice perception of change in the atmosphere than man. 

 Hence it is, that before rain, swallows are seen more eagerly hawking 

 for flies, and ducks carefully trimming their feathers, and tossing water 

 over their backs, to try whether it will run off again without wetting 

 them. But it would be as absurd to accuse the swallows and ducks, on 

 that account, of being the cause of rain, as to impute a tempest to the 

 spiteful malice of the poor Petrels. Seamen ought rather to be thank- 

 ful to them for the warning which their delicate feeling of aerial change 

 enables them to give of an approaching hurricane. 



"As well," Wilson adds, " might they curse the midnight light-house 

 that, star-like, guides them on their watery way, or the buoy that 

 warns them of the sunken rocks below, as this harmless wanderer, 

 whose manner informs them of the approach of the storm, and thereby 

 enables them to prepare for it." 1 The fact is, that though the Petrels 

 venture to wing their way over the wide ocean as fearlessly as our 

 swallows do over a mill-pond, they are not the less sensible to danger 

 and, as if feelingly aware of their own weakness, they make all haste 

 to the nearest shelter. When they cannot then find an island or a rock 

 to shield them from the blast, they make for the first ship they can 

 descry, crowd into her wake, and even close under the stern, heedless, 

 it would appear, of the rushing surge, so that they can keep the vessel 

 between them and the unbroken sweep of the wind. It is not to be 

 wondered at, in such cases, that their low wailing note of weet weet, 

 which may be heard during the whole of a stormy and starless night, 

 should add something supernatural to the roar of the waves and whist- 

 ling of the wind, and infuse an ominous dread into minds prone to 

 superstition. 



If these views be correct, as to us they appear to be, Mr. Knapp has 

 not represented the appearance of our little bird in stormy weather in 



1 Wilson's Am. Orn. vii. 95. Architecture of Birds, p. 30. 



