The wild ducks of the Aucklands are flightless, and in the same group are found flies without wings. In the Snares the mutton-bird tree lies down on its stomach to escape the buffeting blasts, clutching the treacherous peat with fresh rootlets as it grows or crawls along. The western front of the Aucklands shows a wall of dark basalt, thirty miles long, and from four hundred to twelve hundred feet high. No beach skirts it; no trees soften it; only one inlet breaks it. Innumerable jets and little cascades stream from its sharp upper edge, but--so say eye-witnesses--none appear to reach the sea: the pitiless gusts seize the water, scatter it into spray-smoke and blow it into air. The wind keeps the waterfalls from falling, and their vapour, driven upward, has been mistaken for smoke from the fires of castaway seamen. There is, however, one race to whom even the smallest and wildest of our islets are a source of unceasing interest and ever-fresh, if malodorous, pleasure. Zoologists know them for the procreant cradles of Antarctic sea-fowl. And that, from the Kermadecs to the Bounties and the Antipodes, they assuredly are. On Raoul--the largest Kermadec--you may walk among thousands of mutton-birds and kick them off their nests. On the West King, gannets and mackerel gulls cover acre after acre so thickly that you cannot help breaking eggs as you tread, or stumbling against mother-gannets, sharp in the beak. On dismal Antipodes Island, the dreary green of grass and sedge is picked out with big white birds like white rosettes. In the Aucklands, the wandering albatross is found in myriads, and may be studied as it sits guarding its solitary egg on the rough nest from which only brute force will move it. On the spongy Snares, penguins have their rookeries; mutton-birds swarm, not in thousands, but millions; sea-hawks prey on the young of other birds, and will fly fiercely at man, the strange intruder. Earth, air, and sea, all are possessed by birds of unimaginable number and intolerable smell. Penguins describe curves in the air as they dive neatly from the rocks. Mutton-birds burrow in the ground, whence their odd noises mount up strangely. Their subterranean clamour mingles with the deafening discords of the rookeries above ground. On large patches the vegetation is worn away and the surface defiled. All the water is fouled. The odour, like the offence of Hamlet’s uncle, “is rank: it smells to Heaven.” Mr. Justice Chapman found it strong a mile out to sea. In that, however, the Snares must cede the palm to the Bounties; dreadful and barren rocks on which a few insects--a cricket notably--alone find room to exist among the sea-birds. In violent tempests the foam is said to search every corner of the Bounties, cleansing them for the nonce from their ordure. But the purity, such as it is, is short lived. All who have smelt them are satisfied to hope that surf and sea-birds may ever retain possession there. Indeed, as much may be said for the Snares.