ALBATROSS (Diomedea), a genus of web-footed birds, comprising three speeies—the Albatross of China (D. fuliginosa, Latham); the Yellow- and Blaek-Beaked Albatross (D. chlororynchos, Latham) ; and the Common Albatross (D. exulans, Linnaeus.) The genus is princi pally distinguished by the following characters :—‘-a very strong, hard, long beak, which is straight to near the extremity, when it suddenly curves. The upper mandible appears composed of many articulated pieces, furrowed on the aides, and crooked at the point ; the lower mandible smooth and cut short ; the nostrils lateral, and placed like small rolls in the furrow of the mandible; the feet short ; the three toes long and completely webbed ; the wings very long and narrow. The name Albatross is a word apparently corrupted by Dampier from the Portuguese Alcatraz, which was applied by the early navigators of that nation to cormorants and other Large sea-birds.
The Common Albatross is the species which is most frequently met with in the seas of Southern Africa. It is the largest seabird known.
The top of the head is a ruddy gray ; the rest of the plumage is white with the exception of several transverse black bands on the back, and n few of the wing feathers. The feet and membrane are of n deep flesh colour ; the bill a pale yellow.
The weight of this bird has been variously stated from 12 to 28 pounds ; and a similar difference appears to exist in authors with respect to the distance between the extremity of the extended wings. Forster says above 10 feet ; Parkins, 11 feet 7 inches; Cook, 11 feet ; another says 12 feet ; a specimen in the Leverian Museum measured 13 feet ; and Ives (p. 5) mentions one, shot off the Cape of Good Hope, which measured 17i feet from wing to wing.
We can, from this circumstance, readily understand the exten sive range in which the Albatross is found ; not being confined, as Buffon imagined, to the Southern Ocean, but being equally abundant in the northern latitudes, though Forster says he never observed it within the tropics. These' birds are seen in immense flocks about
Behring's Straits and Kamtehatka about the end of June, frequenting chiefly the inner sea, the Kurile Islands, and the Bay of Pentachinensi, whereas scarcely a straggler is to be seen on the eastern or American shore. They seem to be attracted thither by vast shoals of fish, whose migratory movements the albatrosses follow. On their first appearing in those seas they are very lean, but, from finding abundance of food, they soon become fat. Their voracity is so great, that they will often swallow n salmon of four or five pounds weight.
They do not, however, confine themselves to fish, but will prey on any other sea-animal ; and Cook's sailors caught them with a line and a hook. The Kantchaikala]es take them by fastening a cord to a large hook, baited with a whole fish, which the birds greedily seize. Their usual food, however, seems rather to be fish-spawn and small shell-fish.
Notwithstanding their strength, they never venture to attack other sea-birds, but are, on the contrary, attacked by the gulls. " Several large gray gulls," says Cook, " that were pursuing a white albatross, afforded us a diverting spectacle : they overtook it, notwithstanding the length of its wings, and they tried to attack it under the belly, that part being probably defenceless : the albatross had now no means of escaping hut by'dippmg its body into the water; its formidable bill seemed to repel them.' Their Their flesh is tough and dry ; but the Kamtehatkadales take them for the sake of their entrails, which they blow up, and use as buoys for their nets. They employ the wing-bones also, which Edwards says are as long as their whole body, for tobacco pipes.