Although inseparable companions of the sailor, it is not certainly for the pleasure of his society, nor for that afforded by the sight of the ship, that the petrels follow it, but for the certainty of finding in the scraps thrown overboard, as well as in the number of shells in the wake of the ship, food more abundant than he would discover elsewhere in the water. Nothing can equal their voracity but the quickness and vivacity with which they catch sight of the smallest prey and seize it even amidst a stormy sea. From a great distance, and long before the albatross, and the other descriptions of petrels which are often to be seen with the Cape pigeons, have remarked it, they see and pounce on it, and have generally swallowed it before the jealous rivals who follow them have been able to overtake them. The sense of smell does not here come in aid of that of sight, for they often pounce on a piece of wood or something of that description which falls from a vessel, and only abandon it when convinced by the touch that it is not fit for food. Their greediness is such that they will often let themselves be taken in dozens with hooks; no sooner are they on deck than they disgorge a thick liquid the colour of linseed oil. When these birds rest on the sea and let themselves be tossed about by the waves, their appearance, dimensions, form, and colour of plumage strongly resemble our domestic pigeons, and hence the English seamen, struck with the similarity, have given them the name of Cape pigeons. Their size varies; the largest measuring more than 18 inches English from the beak to the tip of the tail, and rather more than a foot in circumference. They are generally seen in great numbers only in stormy weather and in rather high latitudes. In the winter season--that is, during our June, July, and August--they follow the ships constantly between 23° S. lat. and 31° and 103° E. long. Is it not a wonderful thing and worthy of admiration that the instinct with which this bold little navigator is endowed guides him safely through this vast space, where there is nothing to serve him as a landmark, enables him to rejoin his comrades if accidentally separated from them, and teaches him every year when the warm season returns to recognise and find the island or the solitary rock where he was born, and where in his turn he will bring up his young ones; while man, with his maps, his books, his nautical instruments, and in spite of all his long experience, has such difficulty in finding his way across the ocean? And yet we think that our intelligence raises us above the animals. This is what confounds and overwhelms the scholar when he seeks to fathom the great mysteries of creation. THE ALBATROSS. THE ALBATROSS