Let us first glance low down to the lowermost shelf of all, which is thewidest, too, and but a little space from high-water mark. Whatoutlandish beings are these? Erect as men, but hardly as symmetrical,they stand all round the rock like sculptured caryatides, supporting thenext range of eaves above. Their bodies are grotesquely misshapen; theirbills short; their feet seemingly legless; while the members at theirsides are neither fin, wing, nor arm. And truly neither fish, flesh, norfowl is the penguin; as an edible, pertaining neither to Carnival norLent; without exception the most ambiguous and least lovely creature yetdiscovered by man. Though dabbling in all three elements, and indeedpossessing some rudimental claims to all, the penguin is at home innone. On land it stumps; afloat it sculls; in the air it flops. As ifashamed of her failure, Nature keeps this ungainly child hidden away atthe ends of the earth, in the Straits of Magellan, and on the abasedsea-story of Rodondo.

But look, what are yon wobegone regiments drawn up on the next shelfabove? what rank and file of large strange fowl? what sea Friars ofOrders Gray? Pelicans. Their elongated bills, and heavy leathern pouchessuspended thereto, give them the most lugubrious expression. A pensiverace, they stand for hours together without motion. Their dull, ashyplumage imparts an aspect as if they had been powdered over withcinders. A penitential bird, indeed, fitly haunting the shores of theclinkered Encantadas, whereon tormented Job himself might have well satdown and scraped himself with potsherds.