WANDERING ALBATROSS. 
279 
the inexhaustible supply of molluscous animals with which the 
milder seas abound. They are nowhere more abundant than 
off the Cape of Good Hope, where they have been seen in 
April and May, sometimes soaring in the air with the gentle 
motion of a kite, at a stupendous height ; at others nearer the 
water, watching the motions of the flying-fish, which they 
seize as they spring out of the water, to shun the jaws of the 
larger fish which pursue them. Vast flocks are also seen round 
Kamtschatka and the adjacent islands, particularly the Kuriles 
and Bering’s Island, about the end of June. Iheir arrival is 
considered by the natives of these places as a sure presage of 
the presence of the shoals of fish which they have thus followed 
into these remotest of seas. That want of food impels them to 
undertake these great migrations appears from the lean condi- 
tion in which they arrive from the South ; they soon, however, 
become exceedingly fat. Their voracity and gluttony is almost 
unparalleled, — it is not uncommon to see one swallow a salmon 
of four or five pounds weight j but as the gullet cannot con- 
tain the whole at once, part of the tail end will often remain 
out of the mouth ; and they become so stupefied by their 
enormous meals as to allow the natives to knock them on the 
head without offering any resistance. They are often taken 
by means of a hook baited with a fish, though not for the sake 
of their flesh, which is hard and unsavory, but on account of 
their intestines, which the Kamtschadales use as a bladder to 
float the buoys of their fishing-nets. Of the bones they also 
make tobacco-pipes, needle-cases, and other small implements. 
When caught, however, these birds defend themselves stoutly 
with the bill, and utter a harsh and disgusting cry. Early in 
August they quit these inhospitable climes for the more genial 
regions of the South, into which they penetrate sometimes as 
low as the latitude of 67°. 
In Patagonia and the Falkland Islands they are known to 
breed, but not in the northern hemisphere, to which they prob- 
ably iLigrate only in quest of food. They repair to this south- 
ern extremity of the American continent about the time they 
leave the northern regions, being seen at the close of Sep- 
