sea, and finds that more than half its apparent bulk is made up of
several infants in soft swaddles, crowded together into a homogeneous
mass, the result is pleasing astonishment. Only when individuals of the
group move do they become visible to their natural enemies. These tender
young birds enjoy no protection nor any of the comfort of a nest; and if
they were not endowed from the moment of birth with rare consciousness of
their helplessness, the species, no doubt, would speedily become
exterminated, for keen-sighted hawks hover about, picking up those which,
failing to obey the first law of nature, reveal themselves by movement.
If the wind is tempered to the shorn lamb, what is the provision of
Nature which enables so tender a thing as a young bird, a mere helpless
ball of creamy fluff, to withstand the frizzling heat with which the sun
bleaches the broken coral? Many do avail themselves of the meagre shadow
of shells and lumps of coral, but the majority are exposed to the direct
rays of the sun, which brings the coral to such a heat that even the
hardened beachcomber walks thereon with "uneasy steps," reminding him of
another outcast who used that oft-quoted staff as a support over the
"burning marl." Gilbert White relates that a pair of fly-catchers which
inadvertently placed their nests in an intolerably hot situation hovered
over it "all the hotter hours, while with wings expanded and mouths
gaping for breath, they screened the heat from their suffering young."
Parental duty of the like nature does not appear to be practised for the
benefit of the young tern; but they are well fed with what may be
considered thirst-provoking food. Thirst does occasionally overcome the
instinct which the young birds obey by absolute stillness, and a
proportion of those which give way to the ever-present temptation of the
sea falls to the lot of the hawks. Mere fluffy toddlers, with mouths
gaping with thirst, slide and scramble down the coral banks, waddle with
uncertain steps across the strip of smooth sand to be rolled over and
over in their helplessness by the gentle break of the sea. They cool