146 AMSTERDAM ISLAND. 
become its vdctims. Sticks and stones and pieces of iron are 
digested by the ostrich. The secretary bird (the Faico Serpent- 
ariiis) will take into his stomach whole living snakes of the 
most venomous kind, toads, and scorpions, without suffering 
from such an assemblaoe the least inconvenience. That such is 
the fact, with regard to the food of this bird, I can speak with 
confidence. I have seen their young in the nest surrounded with 
wounded but living snakes : and the following circumstance 
puts the matter beyond all doubt. — An English gentleman who 
held an official situation at the Cape of Good Hope, being out 
on a shooting party, kihed one of these birds, w^hich he carried 
home with the intention of having an accurate drawing- 
made from it. He threw it on the floor of the balcony before 
' the house, where, after it had remained some time and been 
examined and tossed about, one of the company observed 
the head of a large snake pushing open the bill, out of which 
it speedily crawled, in perfect vigour, and free from any in- 
jury. On the supposition that others might still be in the 
stomach, the bird was suspended by the legs, and presently 
a second snake made its appearance, as large and as lively 
as the first. The bird was afterwards opened, when the sto- 
mach was found to contain several dead snakes, with a half 
digested mass of lizards and scorpions, scolopendras, centi- 
pedes, and beetles. 
Except on the coast of Spitsbergen, I never saw so vast an 
assemblage of whales, grampusses, porpoises, sea-lions, and 
seals, as were constantly either playing their gambols, or 
fighting and devouring each other, between the ships' an- 
chorage and the entrance of the crater. A fish, a])parent]y 
