We sailed from New York on the 1st of October, 1830. The monotony of a sea voyage, with unscientific people, is tiresome beyond description. The journal of a single day is the history of a month. You rise in the morning, and having performed the necessary ablutions, mount on deck,--"Well Captain, how does she head?"--"South-east by east"--(our course is east by south).--"Bad, bad, Captain--two points off." You then promenade the quarter-deck, until the black steward arrests your progress--grins in your face, and announces breakfast. Down you go, and fall foul of ham, beef, _pommes de terre frites_, jonny-cakes, and _café sans lait;_ and generally, in despite of bad cooking and occasional lee-lurches, contrive to eat an enormous meal. Breakfast being despatched, you again go on deck--promenade--gaze on the clouds--then read a little, if perchance you have books with you--lean over the gunwale, watching the waves and the motion of the vessel; but the eternal water, clouds, and sky--sky, clouds, and water, produce a listlessness that nothing can overcome. In the Atlantic, a ship in sight is an object which arouses the attention of all on board--to speak one is an aera, and furnishes to the captain and mates a subject for the day's conversation. Thus situated, an occasional spell of squally weather is by no means uninteresting:--the lowering aspect of the sky--the foaming surges, which come rolling on, threatening to overwhelm the tall ship, and bury her in the fathomless abyss of the ocean--the laugh of the gallant tars, when a sea sweeps the deck and drenches them to the skin--all these incidents, united, rather amuse the voyager, and tend to dispel the inanity with which he is afflicted. During these periods, I have been for hours watching the motions of the "stormy petrel" (_procellaria pelagica_), called by sailors, "mother Carey's chickens." These birds are seldom seen in calm weather, but appear to follow the gale, and when it blows most heavily they are seen in greatest numbers. The colour is brown and white; the size about that of the swallow, whose motions oh the wing they resemble. They skim over the surface of the roughest sea, gliding up and down the undulations with astonishing swiftness. When they observe their prey, they descend flutteringly, and place the feet and the tips of the wings on the surface of the water. In this position I have seen many of them rest for five or six seconds, until they had completed the capture. The petrel is to be seen in all parts of the Atlantic, no matter how distant from land; and the oldest seaman with whom I have conversed on the subject, never saw one of them rest. Humboldt says, that in the Northern Deserta, the petrels hide in rabbit burrows.