Page:The Works of William Harvey (part 1 of 2).djvu/309

 old nests, which, as useful for firing, are all made objects of traffic by the proprietor ; the sum he mentioned to me exceeds credibility. There was this particular feature which, as it refers to our subject, I shall mention, and also as it bears me out in my report of the multitudes of sea-fowl : the whole island appears of a brilliant white colour to those who approach it, all the cliffs look as if they consisted of the whitest chalk ; the true colour of the rock, however, is dusky and black. It is a friable white crust that is spread over all, which gives the island its whiteness and splendour, a crust, having the same consistency, colour, and nature as an egg-shell, which plasters everything with a hard, though friable and testaceous kind of covering. The lower part of the rock, laved by the ebbing and flowing tide, preserves its native colour, and clearly shows that the whiteness of the superior parts is due to the liquid excrements of the birds, which are voided along with the alvine faces ; which liquid excrements, white, hard, and brittle like the shell of the egg, cover the rock, and, under the influence of the cold of the air, incrust it. Now this is precisely the way in which Aristotle and Pliny will have it that the shell of the egg is formed. None of the birds are permanent occupants of the island, but visitors for purposes of procreation only, staying there for a few weeks, in lodgings, as it were, and until their young ones can take wing along with them. The white crust is so hard and solid, and adheres so intimately to the rock, that it might readily be mistaken for the natural soil of the place.

The liquid, white, and shining excrement is conveyed from the kidneys of birds by the ureters, into the common receptacle or cloaca; where it covers over the alvine faeces, and with them is discharged. It constitutes, in fact, the thicker por- tion of the urine of these creatures, and corresponds with that which, in our urine, we call the hypostase or sediment. We have already said something above on this topic, and have entered into it still more fully elsewhere. We always find an abundance of this white excrement in mews ; where hawks be- smear walls beside their perches, they cover them with a kind of gypseous crust, or make them look as if they were painted with white lead.

In the cloaca of a dead ostrich I found as much of this gyp- seous cement as would have filled the hand. And in like

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