d so high up as to be sometimes invisible. This was the
belief of Snowball.

Now, this belief, or conjecture, or whatever you may--term it, on the
part of Jack tar, though sneered at as impossible, and even scoffed at
as ridiculous, may, after all, not be so very far beyond the truth.
Jack has told some rare tales in his time,--"yarns" that appear to be
"spun" out of his fancy, quite as much as this one,--which, after having
run the gauntlet of philosophic ridicule on the part of closet
naturalists, have in the long run turned out to be true! Has not his
story of the "King of the Cannibal Islands,"--Hokee-pokee-winkee-wum,
with his fifty wives as black as "sut," and all his belongings, just as
Jack described them,--actually "turned up" in reality, in the person of
Thakombau and a long line of similar monsters inhabiting the Fiji
Islands?

Why, then, may not his statements, about the frigate-bird going to sleep
upon the wing be a correct conjecture, or observation, instead of a
"sailor's yarn,"--as sage and conceited, but often mistaken, professors
of "physical science" would have us regard it?

Such professors as are at this moment, in almost every newspaper in the
country,--scientific journals among the number,--abusing and ridiculing
the poor farmer for destroying the birds that destroy his grain; and
telling him, if he were to let the birds alone, they would eat the
insects that commit far greater devastation on his precious _cerealia_!
Conceited theorists! it has never occurred to them, that the victims of
the farmer's fowling-piece--_the birds that eat corn--would not touch an
insect if they were starving_! The farmer does not make war on the
insect-eating birds. Rarely, or never, does he expend powder and shot
on the swallow, the wagtail, the tomtit, the starling, the thrush, the
blackbird, the wren, the robin, or any of the grub and fly-feeders. His
"game" are the buntings and _Fringillidae_,--the larks, linnets,
finches, barley-birds, yellowhammers, and house sparrows, that form the
great flocks afflicting him both in seed-time and harvest; and none of
which (excepting, perhaps, the last-mentioned gentry, who are at times
slightly inclined towards a wormy diet) would touch an insect, even with
the tips of their bills. Ha! ye scribblers of closet conceits! you have
been sneering at "Chaw-bacon" long enough. He may turn and scoff at
you; for, in very truth, the boot (of ignorance) is upon the other leg!