SEA-BIRDS AND OIL-FUEL.

Forest and Bird, Issue 29, 1 April 1933, Page 14

SEA-BIRDS AND OIL-FUEL.

Suddenly, however, we noticed a bird standing in the running shallows of the stream. It did not move as we approached. Maine} stole upon it and lifted it up with his two hands. It was a. guillemot, and a glance was enough to explain its apparent lack of fear. Its breast feathers were clotted thick with oil. Maine} dealt with it in the one way humanely possible. He mercifully broke its neck. “We crossed the stream and pushed on, but I could see that the incident, familiar though it was, had upset him. You ow” he said suddenly, ‘if I was on one of these oil-burning steamers, and I saw the engineers cleaning out their oil tanks, close into land, I d let em have it. I reckon hanging would be too good for a chap who could do that sort of thing. You can’t call me tender-hearted. I’m not like our old man. I'd kill anything that was harmful, or that I wanted to eat, or that I could make brass out of, but I’m damned if I’d torture anything. You can’t think of anything more awful than being a sea-bird like that one I just killed, having to catch all your food by diving, and having your feathers plastered up with that muck, so that you can neither dive nor fly. Slow starvation! Think of it! Swimming over a shoal of herrings, perhaps not more than a foot below you, hungry as hell, and not being able to get a bite at one. It wouldn’t be so bad if they could kill themselves! But they just go on drifting about the sea, or wash up in a storm like this, and stand about till they die of starvation!’

“We counted a score of these tragic by-products of human progress within the next half-mile, all fortunately dead, most of them so encased in congealed oil as to be mummified.” The above is an extract from one of the outstanding books of the year: Three Fevers,” by Leo Waimsi ey. "This is a tale of the lives of the fishermen of (he North-east Coast (of England), as it is being lived since the war bv men

of this grim fascinating coast. . . . Though nothing of the author is allowed to intrude on the narrative, he has lived and endured with these men.” So says Storm Jameson in the Foreword to this wonderful book of present-day fisher life. It is sufficient testimony that the preceding account of the impression made on “ Marney Lunn ” by the sight of the oiled sea-birds is not likely to have been exaggerated. Marney, the fisherman, is described as a man of 25 years of age —a direct descendant of the old Viking raiders of centuries ago —one of a race of men “ full of swift humour, of hardihood, stubborn and fierce in holding what they possess, and brave beyond description, both as fishermen and in the life-boat service. Though now only 25 years of age, he had served for ten years before the mast in the Merchant Service during the War. Can we regard his outburst of fury over the victims of the mis-use of oil-fuel as the drivellings of a weak, ignorant, and sentimental man? Rather let us use this wonderful description as an incentive to ensure than nothing that persuasion and legislation can do shall be left undone to prevent this infamous abuse of the luxury of “ oil-fuel.” —Rita A. Curtis.