322 
THE LIVING WORLD. 
tation, or altering them very slightly for the purpose of depositing their eggs. 
The Jackdaw ( Corvus monedula ) is frequently found making its nest within 
a deserted rabbit burrow. The Stock-dove ( Columba cenas) is also sometimes 
found rearing its young within an abandoned tunnel, as is also the Sheldrake 
(Tadorna vulpanser). This latter, however, invariably adopts a burrow that is 
contiguous to water, in order that its young may be more conveniently fed 
on the insects and Crustacea that live in the water-courses near the sea. The 
sheldrake is not fastidious, being content to accept nearly any hole, so that it 
be suitable for her eggs, which are generally from twelve to fifteen in number, 
which she carefully covers with down plucked from her breast. 
The Stormy Petrel ( Thalassidroma pelagica ), more commonly called Mother 
Cary's chicken , is also a member of the burrowing tribe, though its appearance 
would least suggest such a habit, for it is nearly always met with far out at 
sea. In fact, so constantly does it seem to be on the wing, and at such remote 
distances from the shore, that for many years it was supposed to never visit land, 
but to carry its eggs under its wing and there incubate them. This belief 
was not disproved until within the last fifty years, and many sailors even yet 
refuse to discredit the old fancy. It is therefore with much interest that the 
facts concerning its nesting habits are given. 
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 will also 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 sandy nature, and the lower 
composed chiefly of mud. Not a hope is there in such localities 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 
family treasures. 
Each bird lays a single egg, which is white and of small dimensions. The 
young are funny-looking objects, and resemble 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 in 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 sailors, whose illogical minds are unable to discriminate 
between cause and effect, and who fancy that the petrel , or Mother Cary's chicken , 
as they call the bird, is the being which, by the exercise of some magic art, 
