134 BIRD LIFE ON ISLAND AND SHORE 
some light shed on the character of the Petrel. 
Individuals of many species of birds take a kindly 
interest in the conduct, the motions, the pleasures 
of their fellows. They are hurt by one another’s 
distresses ; they rush to one another’s assistance. 
The most self-engrossed evince at least apprecia- 
tion, sometimes of a hostile and sometimes of a 
curious sort, of the presence of others of its race. 
Perhaps there is hardly a breed where some germ 
of sociability, some seed of fellow-feeling—let it 
be merely challenge, avoidance, warning, or fear 
—cannot be traced. The Mutton bird, I do think, 
reaches the zero of cold-hearted heathenism to- 
wards his race. No interest is shown in each other’s 
affairs, no curiosity. They pass within inches of 
each other, and neither seems to know. Were it 
not for the dread of the terrible rending beak 
one bird would, I verily believe, walk over another. 
They are as- insensible of each other’s presence 
as fallen leaves—as cold. Between the units of 
these frigid millions there is a great gulf fixed, a 
barrier unfathomable, impassable as that sunder- 
ing the quick and the dead. Each pair dwells 
solitary in a vast gregariousness; each couple 
lives alone, self-engrossed in the pack. Nor can 
it be urged in extenuation of such self-concentra- 
tion that the hundreds of thousands noted each 
evening are mere loose units or pairs of one im- 
mense throng. The wheeling circling multitude 
