STRANGE DWELLINGS . 
40 
makes its nest? Such, however, is the case, and the pretty 
little traverser of the ocean shows itself to be as accomplished 
in excavating the ground as it is in flitting over the waves with 
its curious mixture of flight and running. If the Stormy Petrel 
can find a burrow already dug, it will make use of it, and 
accordingly is fond of haunting rocky coasts, and of depositing 
its eggs in some suitable cleft. It also will settle in a deserted 
rabbit-burrow, if it can find one sufficiently near the sea, and is 
found breeding in many places which would equally suit the 
puffin. 
Failing, however, all natural or ready-made cavities, the 
Stormy Petrel is obliged to excavate a tunnel for itself, and 
even on sandy ground is able to make its own domicile. Off 
Cape Sable, in Nova Scotia, there are many low-lying islands, 
the upper parts of which are of a sandv nature, and the lower 
composed chiefly of mud. Not a hope is there in such locali- 
ties of already existing cavities, and yet to those islands the 
Petrels resort by thousands, for the purpose of breeding. The 
birds set resolutely to work, and delve little burrows into the 
sandy soil, seldom digging deeper than a foot, and, in fact, only 
making the cavity sufficiently large to conceal themselves and 
their treasure. 
Each bird lays a single egg, which is white, and of small 
dimensions. The young are funny-looking objects, and re- 
semble puffs of white down rather than nestlings. The parent 
attends to its young with great assiduity, feeding it with the 
oleaginous fluid which is secreted in such quantities by the 
digestive organs of this bird. So large indeed is the amount of 
oil, that in some parts of the world the natives make the Stormy 
Petrel into a lamp, by the simple process of drawing a wick 
through its body. The oil soon rises into the wick, and burns 
as freely as in any of the really rude and primitive, though 
ornamental lamps of the ancients. 
The Petrel only feeds its young by night, remaining on the 
wing during the day, and flying to vast distances from the land. 
Owing to this habit, and its custom of taking to the sea during 
the fiercest storms, it has long been an object of dread to 
