. The bird . s,furnishes the much-prized eider, readily permitted the spoilers toapproach and seize them with their hands. The attitude of these novel creatures was the cause of jileasant mistakes on the part of our navigators. Those who from afar first saw the islands thronged with penguins, standing upright, in their 5 n ■4 THE POLE. costume of white and black, imagined them to be bands of childrenin white aprons ! The stiffness of their small arms—one can scarcelycall them wings in these Iudimentary birds—their awkwardness onland, their difficulty of movement, prove that they belong to theo
. The bird . s,furnishes the much-prized eider, readily permitted the spoilers toapproach and seize them with their hands. The attitude of these novel creatures was the cause of jileasant mistakes on the part of our navigators. Those who from afar first saw the islands thronged with penguins, standing upright, in their 5 n ■4 THE POLE. costume of white and black, imagined them to be bands of childrenin white aprons ! The stiffness of their small arms—one can scarcelycall them wings in these Iudimentary birds—their awkwardness onland, their difficulty of movement, prove that they belong to theocean, where they swim with wonderful ease, and which is theirnatural and legitimate element. One might speak of them as itsemancipated eldest sons, as ambitious fishes, candidates for the char-acters of birds, which had already progressed so far as to transformtheir fins into scaly pinions. The metamorphosis was not attendedwith complete success; as birds powerless and clumsy, they remainskilful ■^AFWr^ Or again, with their largo feet attached so near to the bod)^ witlitheir neck short or poised on a great cylindrical trunk, with theirflattened , one might judge them to be near relations of theirneighbours the seals, whose kindly nature they possess, but not theirintelligence. These eldest sons of nature, eye-witnesses of the ancient ages oftransformation, appeared like so many strange hieroglyphics to thosewho first beheld them. With eyes mild, but sad and pale as theface of ocean, they seemed to regard man, the last-born of the planet,from the depths of their antiquity. AQUATIC BIRDS. 75 Levaillant, not far from the Cape of Good Hope, found thein ingreat numbers on a desert isle where rose the tomb of a poor Danishmariner, a child of the Arctic Pole, whom Fate had led thither to dieamong the Austral wastes, and between whom and his fatherlandthe density of the globe intervened. Seals and penguins supplied himwith a numerous society; the former prostrate
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Keywords: ., bookauthormich, bookcentury1800, bookdecade1860, booksubjectbirds
