278 
THE SHEARWATER. 
Bishop Mant has well described the various services 
rendered by the Fulmar to man : — 
Yet may she coast more northern seas, 
Bound Hebrid isles and Orcades, 
And Shetland onward, till more far 
Her course the icy mountains bar ; 
And there the kindred Fulmar seek, 
Her nostril broad, and crooked beak 
"With yellow nail projecting ; whence, 
Instinctive weapon of defence, 
By Nature taught, against his foes 
A stream of liquid oil he throws 
At random, gathered from the sea, 
His floating food ; more plenteously. 
As tending on the harpooner's sail. 
He shares the plimder of the whale. 
How great is Nature's kindness, shown 
When needed most ! From him alone, 
Free burgher on her common way, 
Himself to man an easy prey, 
By day supplied a grateful feast, 
Their ailments cured, their wounds redrest, 
Their lamp illum'd with evening light, 
With down their couches strewn by night, 
Saint I^lda's simple natives find ; 
Nor less a signal of the wind. 
As by his flittings or repose 
Defined, the aerial current flows. 
The Cinereous Shearwater (Puffimis cinereus). 
The Manx Shearwater (P. Anglorum), sometimes 
called the Lyre, Lyrie, Scrabe, Scraber. 
These two birds represent in Britain the genus Pnffimts, 
the members of which differ from the Fulmars in having 
the bill much more slender, with both points curved down- 
wards. The first of them is about eighteen inches long ; the 
upper parts of the body are brown ; the head and nape 
tinged with grey ; the long quills and graduated tail fea- 
thers are blackish brown, the under parts white. But few 
individuals of the first species have been obtained in Eng- 
land. There is some confusion in the descriptions given 
by naturalists of this bird, which may or may not be 
identical with one described as the Greater Shearwater — 
the Fuffinus major of Faber, or the Wandering Shearwater 
