236 
BLACK SKIMMKR. 
night, or in wet and stormy weather. The young remain for 
several weeks before they are able to fly; are fed with great as- 
siduity by both parents; and seem to delight in lying with loos- 
ened wings, flat on the sand, enjoying its invigorating warmth. 
They breed but once in the season. 
The singular conformation of the bill of this bird has excited 
much surprise; and some writers, measuring the divine propor- 
tions of nature by their own contracted standards of conception, 
in the plenitude of their vanity have pronounced it to be ‘‘ an 
awkward and defective instrument.”* Such ignorant presump- 
tion, or rather impiety, ought to hide its head in the dust on a 
calm display of the peculiar construction of this singular bird, 
and the wisdom by which it is so admirably adapted to the pur- 
poses, or mode of existence, for which it was intended. The 
Shearwater is formed for skimming, while on wing, the surface 
of the sea for its food, which consists of small fish, shrimps, 
young fry, &c., whose usual haunts are near the shore, and to- 
wards the surface. That the lower mandible, when dipt into 
and cleaving the water, might not retard the bird’s way, it is 
thinned and sharpened like the blade of a knife; the upper man- 
dible being at such times elevated above water, is curtailed 
in its length, as being less necessary, but tapering gradually to 
a point, that, on shutting, it may offer less opposition. To pre- 
vent inconvenience from the rushing of the water, the mouth 
is confined to the mere opening of the gullet, which indeed 
prevents mastication taking place there; but the stomach, or 
gizzard, to which this business is solely allotted, is of uncom- 
mon hardness, strength and muscularity, far surpassing, in 
these respects, any other water bird with which I am acquaint- 
ed. To all these is added a vast expansion of wing, to enable 
the bird to sail with sufficient celerity while dipping in the 
water. The general proportion of the length of our swiftest 
Hawks and Swallows, to their breadth, is as one to two; but 
in the present case, as there is not only the resistance of the 
Vide Buffon. 
