Excerpt from Four Feet, Two Feet, and No Feet: Or, Furry and Feathery Pets, and How They Live Their nests are a sort of little mattress, made of drift-grass and sea-weed, and over it they spread a bed of finest down. The care ful mother plucks this down from her own breast, heaping it up in a thick, fluffy roll around the edge of the nest. You know that while she is sitting on her eggs she must some times leave the nest for food. The weather is so cold that before she goes she carefully turns this roll of down over the eggs, to keep them warm until her return. A great deal of money is made by the Icelanders in selling the down. When it is taken from the nest the little mother goes to work just as carefully as before, and makes it all over. But if they take it the second time, and her home is left with bare walls, her breast bare, too, what is she to do? In a moment the male bird comes to her help, and plucks the down off his own breast. His feathers are whiter though not so soft. This down is so light that it takes a great many feathers to weigh anything at all. If you should fill your father's hat with them they would not weigh an ounce. And yet, after all, they would make you the warmest covering in the world. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.