Albatross
2 of the 6 encyclopedias on this shelf carry an entry for Albatross. Both are reproduced below, so you can see where they agree and where they differ.
Aiton's Encyclopedia (1910)
al'ba-tros, an aquatic bird of the southern seas, allied to the petrel and the gull: There are several species. The wandering albatross, with a wing expanse of twelve feet, is the largest web-footed bird known. The hind toe is wanting. The foot is webbed to the very extremity. Occasionally, at least, this bird visits Tampa Bay, Florida. The albatross feeds on fish, but is far from nice in its choice of a meal. When food is plentiful, it gorges till it can hardly move. Any sea carrion, as the floating carcass of a whale, is acceptable. Flying fish are a favorite food. Except when rising from the water, the albatross floats so gracefully in the air that the motion of its wings is hardly perceptible. Its cry is said to be like that of a pelican, but it also brays like a donkey. Its flesh is not edible, although the eggs are eaten. The nest is formed by making a slight hollow in the sand not far from the sea. Only one egg, about four inches long, is laid. The albatross is a picturesque feature of the lonely Antarctic waters, where it follows the whaler's ship in hope of food. This trait is utilized by Coleridge in his The Rime of the Ancient Mariner . The black-footed albatross, a smaller bird, haunts the North Pacific. Flocks of fifteen or twenty follow the tourists' ship from San Francisco to the Aleutian Islands.
Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)
Important: Safety Warning
This page states that certain wild plants are safe to eat. Its identifications and edibility claims are more than a century old and in some cases simply wrong, and deadly look-alikes exist for many edible species. Never eat a wild plant on the strength of this text.
In addition, this page describes collecting wild birds' eggs, shooting birds for specimens, or similar practices. These activities are now illegal under wildlife-protection laws, including the Migratory Bird Treaty Act, and they contributed to the decline of the very species described.
This information has been left in for historical purposes but should not be acted upon.
a large sea bird, belonging to the procellarida, or petrol family. It is the diomedea exulans of Linnæus. When young it is of a sooty or brown Win ALBATROSS color, but when mature it is white with black wings. It nests on elevated land, and lays numerous eggs, which are edible. S. of the Cape of Good Hope sailors call it the Cape sheep; sometimes, also, it is named the man-of-war bird. E erything about the great wandering albatross is vast-the wings are enormous, its flight is reckoned by the thousand miles. There is a northern species near Bering Straits.
What Has Changed in the Last Century
The basic natural history holds: the wandering albatross (Collier's "diomedea exulans of Linnæus") still has the largest wingspan of any living bird, about 11 feet, and satellite tracking since the 1990s has confirmed the 1921 boast that its flight is "reckoned by the thousand miles" — birds circle the Southern Ocean and forage thousands of miles from the nest between feeds. Collier's was wrong on one point Aiton's got right: an albatross lays a single egg, not "numerous eggs," and the big species breed only every other year, which is why they recover so slowly. What has changed utterly is their standing. Most of the world's albatross species are now listed as threatened, chiefly from drowning on baited longline hooks and from plastic swallowed at sea; an international Agreement on the Conservation of Albatrosses and Petrels was opened for signature in 2001. The egg-collecting the 1921 account mentions in passing is now illegal.
Written for this edition, 2026.