THINGS NOT GENERALLY KNOWN.

King Country Chronicle, Volume IV, Issue 239, 5 March 1910, Page 5

THINGS NOT GENERALLY KNOWN.

About the Albatross

By W.B

"A stuamer, the Tottenham, passed iome floating corpses, especially one, & woman, on whose body perched an "albatross." Thus, the press, whose latter clause alone casts a doubt upon the -tale, for no albatross ever perches on a carcase whether upon land or sea, for this reason: He is a bird whose life is spent upon the wing, and when he does alight, requires a level space to run along and gather impetus to rise again. Where, in his opinion, this space is insufficient he will settle there, no matter how tempting the attraction or how hungry bs may be. If his find be floating in the sea, he will settle some distance from it, and cautiously approach, and finding nothing to arouse his fer.r, open his nineinch mandibles, bite in where a previous wound or edge, or putrefactions tender spot, indicates where his labours will render best results. Then he bites in, and leaning back, shores out his five-inch webbed triangles of feet, half spreads his wings to beat against the air, and hanging on, jerks off such sized junks as the hardness or softness of his find permits. This is a fact to which every deep sea whaler can testify. When he has glutted to repletion, he backs away and washes bis beak, and suddenly remembering his wife, some hundred or more miles away, sitting on her egg, awaiting his return to feed ber, spreads out his wings, and running along the sea sur- - with a clappering patter, to gather momentum, and as the air impinges on the under surface of his wings, is gradually lifted as up an inclined plane, soars grandly away upon his journey, and without a wingflap for hours, scribes those parabolic curves, which make him monarch of the storm, and the envy of puny, clumsy, unbirdly man, who would do the like. When he has started on his journey—nay, long before —the next strongest takes his place, and must, like him, be the doughtiest of the seething battling scrum who gather from far and near to banquet at the feast. J?'or that is Nature justified in her domain; the ablest to push the weak aside, lives to perpetuate his kind. But should the flotsam prize be cast upon a shore of level sandy beach, he will also land, not beside it. but some distance off. Then he waddles cumbrously toward the viand; if one is there before him, a splendid battle of .feather pluck, and slap, and scream decides who of the twain shall dine in peace. When he has filled out every crease and cran, he gravely "backs away, and spreading out his * wings, turns to where an unobstructed run will assist him to rise upward, flies - seaward, swoops low and cleans his teeth by opening his jaws, lets the water swish in and out, to cleanse ihem in his. flight. But if his find is cast upon the rocks, be may not land, but soaring to an fro above it, grits his beak, and glaring down, laments the fate which placed it in his view and reach, provisoed with the horrible alternative, if he alight, he must either take his chance to leave by sea, and get mangled in the surf, or remain a prisoner to perish on the land. For he knows —how, who can tell —that he cannot run upon the jagged rocks to assist bis rise, neither can he alight upon the rocks if they are low; for he is a heavy bird and would come down with a crash. Neither can his disused enfeebled feet with their soft webbed toss bear his weight upon the jag points to approach from a distance off. That is why you see him in hundreds, sail here, and yon, and back again; each return a hand's-breadth closer down; and when the appetising stench excites in him unbearable resolves to cast discretion to the winds and hazard all, come weal, come woe, and already lowers his feet to settle down, .a instinct warns him just in time, of that impassable alternative, so he swiftly snugs them home again, and passes on. How, then, it may be asked, does he settle on the nesting rock? His nesting rocks are high, to which he swoops upward from below, and he times his ascent with such fine exactitude that when he arrives beside his wife, the momentum of his swoop is spent, and he alights with ease. And when he has fed his spouse, he either takes a spell at hatching while she goes out for a motor soar, or hp to the cliff-edge, or minor precipice, and spreading his wings drops into space and floats away, No; no albatross settles where he cannot find space for "a-preliminary run.

Father made it a law aboard his ships that no seabirds—petrels, cape pigeons, or albatross should be caught with hook and line at sea. So when one Sabbath afternoon he came on deck, and saw an albatross, wings half spread, staring dully around, a streak of blood trickling from the corner of bis jaws, where the hook bad rent bis tongue, father got pregnant with a mighty wrath:- "Did I not order that bird-fishing with hook and line shall cease?" Whereupon, to smother his displeasure, the sailors made response: "We thought it might" (pointing at me) •''amuse your son there." "If my son is so anxious for condemned amusement, a rope's end H not unavailable!" And casting his arms upward, thought to shoo the prisoner into flight, not knowing, poor man, that because it had no room to run it could not rise, and was as good as nailed with feet to deck. So it only champed its beak at him Bnd stared some more. Then father closed in to lift it overboard, but just as he stooped to grasp it, it opened wide its shears, and selecting the ealf of his leg to experiment upon, closed them V there and pulled, and the same instant opening out ita wings, smote him on the thigh, and by this jiu jitsu grip threw him crone upon the deck! To ere is human, to forgive but father was not suffering frorn divinity just then; so with wild intent to retribute, he kicked fiercely at the spot where the bird held stood, and hit a-coil of rope! Then he gathered up a •thousand years of lighting [P? put thero PR a belaying pin. But the sailors quickly opened the . gangway and tumbled the bird back to his native habitat. . No; give the albatross a running

chance for life or he will settle neither on corpse, carcase nor rocky shore. Forty years of intimate acquaintanceship with every species of seabird guarantee that I am right.