Page:Narrative of a Visit to the Australian Colonies.djvu/138

102 numerous, but I only visited two, named Trefoil Island, and Pelican Island, both of which are small. The V. D. Land Company have some fine Merino sheep upon the former, on which there are breeding places of the Mutton-bird. Pelicans are said to breed on the latter, as well as some smaller birds. The Stormy Petrel and the Blue Petrel, colonize the Petrel Islands, and the Wandering Albatross rears its young on Albatross Island, where it sits on its eggs till knocked down by the sealers for the sake of its feathers, which are sold for about 9d. a pound. A single bird will yield about a pound of feathers. Nearly 1,000 Albatrosses are said to have been killed on this island, last year. Sometimes the birds are stunned, plucked, and cruelly left to linger; but often, the skin of the neck is taken, as well as the feathers; the down on this part being nearly equal to that of the swan. The colonization of many of the Islands in Bass's Straits, by different kinds of sea-fowl, is a curious subject, probably dependent upon circumstances of peculiar character. One of these, is the absence of the carnivorous quadrupeds of the larger islands, which, though not destructive to man, are so to birds. Another is the structure of the coast. The Albatross and Mutton-bird requiring a cliff, or sudden rise, to fly from, cannot take up with a low, sloping shore. The Penguin, which cannot fly, requires an easy ascent from the beach. Perhaps some of the other species take up with islands that are unoccupied by the myriads of those already named, merely because these Islands are left vacant.

Some of the kelp or sea-weed, washed up on this shore, is of gigantic magnitude; a palmate species has a stem thicker than a man's arm, and proportionately long. The flat portion between the stem and the ribbon-like appendages, is so large as to be converted by the Blacks, into vessels for carrying water. For this purpose, they either open an oblong piece, so as to form a flat bag, or run a string through holes in the margin of a circular piece, so as to form a round one. There is also much kelp of smaller dimensions, near the shore: among this, there are shells, in considerable variety; and adhering to the rocks, Haliotis tuberculata and levigata, called in