The Little Auk, or Sea Dove, is an example of the genus Mergulus. It braves the inclemency of very high latitudes, and is found in immense flocks on the inhospitable coasts of Greenland, Spitsbergen, and Melville Island. Here they watch the motion of the ice, and when it is broken up by storms, “they come down in legions, crowding into every fissure, to banquet on the crustaceous and other marine animals which lie there at their mercy.
“The Little Auk is between nine and ten inches in length; the bill is black and the legs inclining to brown; the plumage is black and white; and in winter the front of the neck, which is black in summer, becomes whitish. It lays but one egg, of a pale, bluish green, on the most inaccessible ledges of the precipices which overhang the ocean.” Such are the accounts of the naturalists and voyagers who have visited the arctic regions. With its name of Sea Dove, its apparently delicate structure, and its daring and heroic habits of life, it affords a most inviting theme to the poet.
PLEASANT WORDS.
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BY CAROLINE MAY.
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Pleasant words are as an honey-comb, sweet to the soul, and health to the bones. Prov. xvi. 24.
Many truths the Wise man gives
To his sons and daughters,