42 BIRDS OF THE DISTRICT OF GEELONG 
believe that but a hundred miles away, across the sea 
to the south-east, lie islands where the Mutton-bird 
practically supports the human population, and 
where the musky reek of the gathered myriads of 
breeding birds in the season of the year carries miles 
down the wind from the island rookeries. 
Smells — scents, if you will — ^have a way of clinging 
in the memory. Two will never be effaced from 
mine. One is that of the blossoming Sicilian orange- 
groves, wafted to a great liner midway in the Straits 
of Messina ; the other, the strange uncanny savour 
of Chappell Island, as one warm November morning 
in the little Star^ of Launceston, I passed under the 
lee of its burrow-riddled peak on the way to the 
" mainland of Flinders," as they call it in these 
stormier southern straits. 
It was at the little settlement on Cape Barren 
Island that the universal immanence of the Mutton- 
bird was most forcibly borne in upon me. True, 
we had eaten it, pickled, on the boat — eaten it rather 
oftener than was necessary, I thought — and had tasted 
the renowned eggs. But at Cape Barren, as later on 
other islands, we found the talk was of nothing but 
birds, or bairds," as the islanders pronounce it. 
Bird for them means Mutton-bird — it is the bird 
far excellence ; just as in Scotland a " fish " means 
a salmon. A quaint race, these islanders ; descended 
from Tasmanian blacks with heaven knows how 
many intermediate crossings, they one and all show 
§ome traces of their aboriginal ancestry, be it only in 
