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The wild animal of the forest, when pining, for the first time, in a cage, or the weary land-bird, blown off, far away upon the restless sea, could not have been more out of their elements than tall and ungainly Reuben Gubbins on the deck of his Majesty's ship Eos.
The half-awed but still resentful mate returned a look in which fear and triumph struggled for the mastery, as he answered, "You, who know how to sail a ship without a crew, can never want a boat! Besides, you shall never say to your friends, whoever they may be, that we leave you without the means of reaching the land, if you are indeed a land-bird at all. There is the launch."
Strange sea-monsters, more beautiful than monstrous, sported in the foam about our prow, and at intervals dashed it with color like animated rainbows. From wave to wave the flying fish skimmed like winged arrows of silver. Sometimes a land-bird was blown across the sky the sea-birds we had always with us, and ever the air was spicy and the breeze like a breath of balm.
Thus in the Galapagos Islands nearly every land-bird, but only two out of the eleven marine birds, are peculiar; and it is obvious that marine birds could arrive at these islands more easily than land-birds.
As icebergs are known to be sometimes loaded with earth and stones, and have even carried brushwood, bones, and the nest of a land-bird, it can hardly be doubted that they must occasionally, as suggested by Lyell, have transported seeds from one part to another of the arctic and antarctic regions; and during the Glacial period from one part of the now temperate regions to another.
Her thoughts flew to a thousand and one things: home, her father, episodes from school-life; toward anything and everywhere like a land-bird lost at sea, futilely and vainly in the endeavor to shut out the portrait of the broken man.
If a land-bird perishes at sea, a sea-bird is equally cast away upon the land; and I have known the sooty tern, with its almost omnipotent wing, to fall down, utterly famished and exhausted, two hundred miles from salt water. But my interest in these things did not last beyond the third day.
They are easily killed by salt-water, and it does not appear probable that young worms or their egg- capsules could be carried in earth adhering to the feet or beaks of land-birds. Moreover Kerguelen Land is not now inhabited by any land-bird. In this volume we are chiefly concerned with the earth cast up by worms, and I have gleaned a few facts on this subject with respect to distant lands.
To give a few examples: in the Galapagos Islands nearly every land-bird, but only two out of the eleven marine birds, are peculiar; and it is obvious that marine birds could arrive at these islands more easily than land-birds.
At noon on the 16th, we were in latitude 39° 45' S., longitude 208° W. At about two o'clock the wind came about to the W.S.W. upon which we tacked and stood to the N.W.; soon after, a small land-bird perched upon the rigging, but we had no ground with 120 fathom.
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