90 
BLACK SKIMMER. 
by both parents ; and seem to delight in lying with loosened 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 awk- 
ward and defective instrument.”* Such ignorant presumption, 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 purposes 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 towards the surface. That the lower man- 
dible, 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 mandible being at such times elevated above water is 
curtailed in its length, as being less necessary, but tapering gra- 
dually to a point, that, on shutting, it may offer less opposition. 
To prevent inconvenience from the rushing of the water, the mouth 
is confined to the mere opening of the gullet, which indeed pre- 
vents mastication taking place there ; but the stomach, of gizzard, 
to which this business is solely allotted, is of uncommon hardness, 
strength and muscularity, far surpassing in these respects any other 
water bird with which I am acquainted. 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 air, but also that of the water to overcome, a still 
Vide BuiFon. 
