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.
A wise and bountiful Providence has taken care to people the most distant and desert parts of the globe, whether covered with eternal snow or impenetrable forests. In the waters of the ocean are, as well as in our fields and woods, creatures which rejoice the eyes of man and provide for his wants. Of all these creatures none are more charming and pleasing than the birds; endowed either with melodious voices or brilliant plumage, or with some other charm or quality, such as vivacity, quickness and grace of movement, and power of flight; all have attractions for us; and even in our museums, in spite of their faded plumage and often altered forms, they are still objects of admiration, not only to the learned naturalist, but to men who care little for other beautiful sights.
