Page:Polar Exploration - Bruce - 1911.djvu/147

Rh in British waters breed in Antarctic islands! This fact is hardly conceivable when we consider the proportions of the bird, which are much the same as those of a swallow, but the same remarkable fact appears to hold good for the Arctic tern, which breeds in the Arctic Regions, and which was discovered by the Scotia naturalists to be spending its days, during the northern winter, in the seas off Coats Land!

Ross regarded the presence of the Snowy petrel as a sign of proximity of the Antarctic pack, and this observation appears to be perfectly correct, for there are few days, whilst navigating in the pack, that one does not meet this graceful bird. It is circumpolar in distribution, and breeds in most inaccessible cliffs on nearly all Antarctic coasts. For three hundred years the Cape pigeon has been known to every South Sea sailor, but the eggs were first taken by Dr. Pirie on the cliffs of Mount Ramsay, on the west side of Jessie Bay, South Orkneys, in 1903. This species which we are inclined to regard as the most plentiful bird in the world, will probably be found to breed on most Antarctic and subantarctic islands, and on many parts of the coast-line of Antarctica, and is found scattered over the whole of the vast Southern Ocean from 35° S. to the edge of the Antarctic continent. Fully 50,000 of these birds breed in the South Orkneys.