224 
SEA-SWALLOWS. 
They are very tame ; and we have approached one 
of our British species ( Sterna hirundo ), as it rested 
on a patch of mud, a boat’s-buoy, or a piece of 
floating wood, till we might have almost knocked it 
down with a stick. They appear, indeed, to have 
little or no sense of danger : if three or four are in 
company, and one is shot, the others will usually, 
instead of hurrying away, come fluttering down to 
the dead body, uttering their soft, mournful, or, as in 
this case it might he termed, reproachful cry. Their 
whole appearance is in truth so beautiful and attrac- 
tive, that we can readily enter into the feeling with 
which one of these birds was regarded by a forlorn, 
starving boatVcrew, whose vessel, striking on an ice- 
island on her passage from Halifax, in North Ame- 
rica, to England, foundered, and left her miserable 
inmates on the wide ocean, hourly expecting to he 
swallowed up by the heavy seas, which were con- 
stantly breaking over the crowded boats. It w r as 
on the evening of the sixth day after quitting the 
wreck*, just before night set in, that a beautiful 
white bird, “ web-footed, and not unlike a Dove 
in size and plumage, hovered over the mast-head 
of the cutter ; and, notwithstanding the pitching 
of the boat, frequently attempted to perch on it, 
and continued fluttering there till dark. Trifling as 
this circumstance may appear," continues the writer 
of the narrative, “ it was considered by us all as a 
propitious omen. The impressive manner in which 
it left us, and returned to gladden us with its pre- 
sence, awakened in us a superstition, to which 
sailors are at all times said to be prone. We 
* Narrative of the loss of the Lady Hobart Packet. 
