“Though this fellow-feeling was so strongly and so remarkably manifested with regard to the broken wing,—when feeding together, the abler female did not hesitate to take advantage of her greater agility, by snatching away from her mate his share of victuals, and grappling with him for one and the same piece of meat. Instinct seems to exhibit simple, not complex emotions. If the male bird had been utterly unable to feed himself, the female would, possibly, herself have supplied him with food:—but, able to eat, the undivided passion was the feeding appetite; and the instinctive habit of striking at the prey, and grabbing it, was not capable of restraint, or of any modification whatever. “The Booby has an uncontrollable predilection for elevated spots as perching places. If a single stone be higher than others in the yard, the Booby’s eye perceives it, and there he takes up his station, and stands, when he has fed, and is satisfied. If a log or a bundle of wood lie about, he mounts it, and perches upon it to sun himself, extending his wings over his tail, and erecting his dorsal feathers for the admission of the genial beams of morning. He roosts upon similar vantage spots, generally on the tops of the triangular coops in which are kept our fattening poultry. He has great prehensile power with his foot; and his serrated middle-toe is frequently applied to scratch the naked skin about his eyes and face. Our birds are fonder of flesh meats, such as beef and pork, than of fish. They dislike fat, and generally reject it, if it be given separately from the lean. They never drink, and are just as regardless of the water about the yard, as if they had been as unadapted for it, as hens and turkeys.”[131] [131] The following note I received from my friend, since the above was prepared for the press. “My male Booby died the other day. I found animalcules in the liver. Its anatomy exhibited, in a remarkably interesting manner, the fine adaptation for the purposes of buoyancy, detailed by Professor Owen in the dissection of the kindred Gannet. The muscles showed the air-vessels interspersed among them, in a manner altogether surprising. They had the appearance, as he expresses it, of being dissected. The bird, in the act of expiring, had almost entirely discharged the air from about the chest; but very considerable inflation still subsisted in the thighs. The large femoral muscle might be said to be almost entirely detached from the enveloping integument. The septa of the cells seemed alone to attach it to the adjacent flesh. There was no adhesion, but along one of its edges.” The cells were strongly united to the skin; and the roots of the feathers protruded into the internal cavities, as if they grew out of nothing. The cells must have performed their office with marvellous readiness, for the nerves were easily traceable among them. The air-vessels were like so many colourless bubbles.