PROCELLAMA, Lin. PETREL.
Bill as long as, or longer than, the head, very hard, sharp-edged, depressed, and dilated at the base, the tip compressed and gibbous ; both mandibles channelled and abruptly inflected towards the extremity ; nostrils promi nent at the surface of the bill, united and involved in a tube, which either forms a single opening, or exhibits two distinct openings ; legs middle-sized, often long, slender, and the tarsi compressed ; the three front toes emirely webbed and long, and the hinder represented by a long pointed nail ; wings long.
This is a pretty numerous family, but several of the species which it includes are as yet very imperfectly known. Their habits are more or less like those of semi noctural birds, many of them pursuing their prey during the dawn, twilight, or the luminous nights of the north ern latitudes, and concealing themselves during broad day in the fissures and caverns of rocks, or the forsaken bur rows of rabbits, or of other animals that live under the surface of the soil. They chiefly frequent those portions of the ocean that are the abodes of cetaceons animals, and are seldom seen along the shores, or at a distance from the sea, unless driven by violent gales from their ordinary stations. On the approach of a storm, they have often no other resource than rugged cliffs, or the yard-arms of ves sels at sea; and they are often seen in the wake of a ship under sail, where they find some shelter from the wind, and are ready to surprise their prey. Although in their flight they seem to graze the billows, they are seldom observed to rest or swim on the surface of the water, and most of the species are supposed to be incapable of diving. Their Eng lish designation is derived from an allusion to Peter walk ing on the water ; but, when apparently stepping on that element, their wings are fully expanded. They feed on the flesh of the morse and whales, and on such mollusca, insects, and worms, as float on the surface of the ocean. They breed in the crevices of rocky cliffs, or the deserted burrows of quadrupeds, discharging a sort of oily liquid from their nostrils on those who attack them or their young, and, by squirting it in the eyes of intruders, sometimes disconcert attempts to rob their nest. The female is rather smaller than the male, but not otherwise distin guishable; and the young arc not so unlike the mature birds as in the two preceding genera.
P. glacialis, Lin. &c. Fu/mar or Fulmar Petrel. Prov. tllallmock, Afallduck, or John Down. 1Vhitish, back hoary, bill and feet yellowish ; nostrils composed of two tubes, lodged in a common sheath. About the size
of the common gull, and from sixteen to seventeen inches long. Inhabits both the northern and southern oceans, seldom approaching the coast except to breed, or when accidentally driven to land. While Captain Ross's ships were detained by the ice from the 24th of June to the 3d of July, in latitude 71°, fulmars were passing in a continual stream to the northward, in numbers inferior only to the flights of passenger pigeons in North America ; so that multitudes of them possibly breed among the rocks and ices of the extreme north, as they are known to do in Spitzbergen, Greenland, St. Kilda, &c. They appear in the friths of Orkney, and the noes of Shetland, chiefly in the winter season. They are bold, gluttonous, very fat and fetid, subsisting on live or dead fish, or whales and carcasses, or garbage of almost any description, in quest of which they will follow ships or boats for a great way. They are often seen in the track of wounded whales, on which they pounce as often as the latter rise to breathe, and tear the blubber from their back. As soon as the crang is set adrift, it is covered over with these voracious birds, which then utter a loud and disagreeable noise. When the carcass is yet alongside the ship, they sur round it in vast numbers, and are so eagarly intent on their prey, that they suffer themselves to be caught with the hands, and may be easily knocked down by those who are on the dead animal or in the boat. They breed in large companies among the recesses of the rocks, &c. the female depositing only one large and pure white egg. Not withstanding their oily and rancid flavour, they are salted for food by the Greenlanders, Esquimaux. and the inhabit ants of Hudson's Bay, who, with the Kurile islanders, eat them raw, dried, or boiled ; and they use the expressed oil both for food and for their lamps. Even the St. Kildi ans partake of such loathsome fare, capturing the young about the beginning of August. The oil they value as a catholicon, and preserve it with great care. Every young bird yields about an English pint of it. Above the tem perature of 52° Fahrenheit it remains very pure, but un der that point it becomes turbid. The fulmar, we have to add, attends the fishing vessels on the banks of Newfound land, and feeds on the liver and offal of the cod that are thrown pverboard. It is taken by means of a hook, bait cd with a piece of liver, and being stretched at length on a stick, and sunk under water, it is, in a very short time, reduced to a most accurate skeleton, by the Cancer locusta, Lin.