THE ALBATROSS. 
123 
Leverian museum measured thirteen feet; and Ives (p. 5), 
mentions one, shot off the Cape of Good Hope, which 
measured seventeen feet and a half from wing to wing. Dr. 
Arnott, in his Physics, says, — “ How powerful must be the 
wing-muscles of birds, which sustain themselves in the sky 
for hours together ! The Great Albatross, with wings extend- 
ing fourteen feet or more, is seen in the stormy solitude of 
the Southern Ocean, accompanying ships for whole days 
without ever resting on the waves !” 
We can, from this circumstance, readily understand the 
extensive range in which the Albatross is found ; not being 
confined, as Buffon imagined, to the Southern Ocean, but 
being equally abundant in the northern latitudes, though 
Forster says, he never observed it within the tropics. These 
birds are seen in immense flocks about Behring's Straits 
and Kamtschatka, about the end of J une, frequenting chiefly 
the inner sea, the Kurile Islands, and the B^y of Pent- 
schinensi, whereas scarcely a straggler is to be seen on the 
eastern or American shore. They seem to be attracted 
thither by vast shoals of fish, whose migratory movements 
the albatrosses follow. On their first appearing in those 
seas, they are very lean, but, from finding abundance of 
food, they soon become fat. Their voracity is so great, that 
they will often swallow a salmon of four or five pounds 
weight, and then, being half choked, and unable, in con- 
sequence, to move, the natives easily knock them down 
with a stick. 
