ext day and the few succeeding days made
them acquainted with several birds that they had never seen, and the
boys were so interested in them that Harry wrote a description, which we
will presently consider. But before doing so, however, we will look at a
note which Ned made concerning the waves of the Southern Ocean.

"The waves of this part of the boundless waste of waters that covers
three fourths of the globe," said Ned, in his journal, "are the largest
we have ever seen. The prevailing winds are westerly, and the captain
tells us that they drive a continuous series of waves right around the
globe. You have heard of the long swell of the Pacific, but it is not,
at least in the Northern Hemisphere, anywhere equal to the immense
swells of the Southern Ocean. I have never seen waves that began to be
as large. The captain says that the crests are often thirty feet high,
and three hundred and ninety feet apart. Sir James Ross, in his
Antartic expedition, measured waves thirty-six feet high, and said that
when two ships were in the hollows of two adjoining waves, their hulls
were completely concealed from each other by the crest of water between
them. This great steamer, measuring nearly five thousand tons, is rolled
and tossed as if it were nothing more than an egg-shell, and such of the
passengers as are liable to seasickness are staying below out of sight.
Fancy what it must be to sail on this ocean in a small craft of one
hundred or two hundred tons! I think I would prefer to be on shore."

And now we come to Harry's account of the birds. He wrote as follows:--

"Dr. Whitney says that I must make a distinction between land birds,
coast birds, and ocean birds. Land birds are only at sea by accident;
coast birds are seen only in the neighborhood of the land, but ocean
birds go far out at sea, and rarely visit the land except during their
breeding season. When you see a land bird out of sight of the shore, you
can know that he has been driven there by the wind; perhaps in a squall
or rain storm. The doctor tells me that we can make a general
distinction between the three kinds of birds, by remembering that the
more the bird lives on the land, the more he flaps his wings, and most
land birds flap their wings constantly. A few, like the eagle, condor,
and other birds of prey, sail about and flap their wings occasionally,
but the true ocean birds, as a rule, flap their wings very little.

"An interesting flyer that we hav