OCR Text |
Show 126 BY PATH AND TKAIL. the gulls, petrels and the like have their own allotments and the land birds theirs, and between them there is no friction or intrusion on each others' premises. With the first sign of dawn they begin the flight for their feed ing grounds, and for hours the heavens are intermittent ly obscured by the countless members of this aerial host. They fly in battalions, or in orderly detachments, reach the feeding grounds on land or water fifty or a hundred miles away and at once scatter and separate in search of food. An hour before twilight, and timing their distance, they rise again, converge to an aerial center and wing for home. As the birds approach the rookeries they announce their coming by cries, calls or shrieks and are answered by those on the nests or by the young but lately hatched. The cry of the birds is heard far out at sea, and to the ship that sees no land, the effect is weird and ghastly, if not ghostly. The decomposing bodies of dead birds, of feathers, bones, flesh and entrails, the disinte gration of shells and the droppings from millions of birds for thousands of years have superimposed upon the primitive surface of the islands a deposit of great commercial value, and in places eighty feet deep. This deposit, saturated with ammonia and phosphorus, is called guano and, wherever found, is dug out, chiefly by Chinese coolies, loaded on ships and freighted to the sea ports of Europe, where it is bagged or barreled and sold to gardeners and farmers for fertilizing their lands. On islands like Rotunda off Antigua, where the rock is por ous and friable, and on which rain occasionally falls, the guano liquefies, percolates through the porous stone and decomposes the rocks into what is known as mineral phosphates. |