Petrel of 1858. The thanks of this Society, and of naturalists
generally, are clue to Mr. Hartcup for the opportunities
he has afforded for a thorough inspection (with permission
to photograph it) of this unique specimen ; and having,
myself, first obtained the confirmatory opinions of Professor
Newton and Mr. Osbert Salvin, it was exhibited by
the latter at a meeting of the Zoological Society on the
16th of May, 1882.”*
There appears to he no well-authenticated instance of
the occurrence of the Dusky Shearwater on the Continent of
Europe, nor in the Mediterranean, for Prof. H. H. Giglioli
does not include it in the list of his rare birds obtained in
Italy, and, as already mentioned, the bird to which the name
of P. obscurus has frequently been applied is merely a form
of the Manx Shearwater. The nearest haunts of the Dusky
Petrel appear to he in the vicinity of the Canaries, Madeira,
and perhaps the Azores. Mr. Edward Vernon Harcourt, to
whom the Author was indebted for a specimen of the bird
and its egg, has particularly referred to this species in his
published Sketch of Madeira (pp. 122 and 165). Eight or
nine species of the birds of this family breed on, or frequent,
the Desertas, a group of small islands about eighteen
miles east from Madeira. “ The Dusky Petrel is a very
tame bird, and will live upon almost anything; my bird
would climb up my trowsers by its beak and claws to obtain
small portions of food ; it runs along the ground on its
belly, and uses its curious-shaped bill in climbing up the
rocks. Those I had in my possession alive, were some of
them caught with fish-hooks baited with meat, by the Portuguese,
and some taken by the hand in the day-time from
underneath stones, where they hide from the light. The
egg, and they lay hut one, measures one inch and seven-
eighths in length, by one inch and three-eighths in breadth,
rather smaller at one end than at the other, and pure white.”!
The dimensions of an egg taken by Mr. Hurrell on the
* See Proc. Zool. Soc. 1882, p. 421.
f Thé* passage within quotation-marks does not appear to be in the above
work, and was probably communicated to the Author by letter.—[Ed.]
Desertas with the birds, and now in the Salmon collection
of eggs at the Linnean Society, are P9 by 1*4 in.
The following account of the Dusky Shearwater as observed
at the Bahamas is given by Dr. Henry Bryant in the
Proceedings of the Boston Society of Natural History, vii.
p. 182 :—
“ On making inquiries as to what sea-birds breed on the
kays, I was constantly told of a singular bird with a hooked
bill that only flew during the night, and was known by the
name of Pimlico; it proved to he the present species. It
is very abundant, being found on all the uninhabited kays,
near the channel, which are not too frequently visited by
wreckers or fishermen. They breed in holes in the rock, as
described in the ‘ Naturalist in Bermuda.’ Near Nassau,
at the Ship Channel kays, where I first met with them,
incubation had already commenced by the 24th of March ;
the nest, consisting of a few dry twigs, is always placed in
a hole or under a projecting portion of the rock, seldom
more than a foot from the surface, and never, as far as my
experience goes, out of reach of the hand ; on being caught
they make no noise and do not resist at all, unlike the
tropic-bird, which fights manfully, biting and screaming
with all its might. The egg does not seem to me to resemble
an ordinary hen’s egg; the shell is much more
fragile and more highly polished. I broke a number of
them in endeavouring to remove the bird from the nest.
They vary a good deal in size and form, some of them being
quite rounded and others elongated ; three of them measured
as follows : one ’059 by '036, another *052 by *033, and the
third -051 by ‘037 : both sexes incubate. Why these birds
and the Stormy Petrels never enter or leave their holes in
the day-time, is one of the mysteries of nature; both of
them feeding or flying all day, are yet never seen in the
vicinity of their breeding-places before dark. When anchored
in the night-time near one of the kays on which they breed,
their mournful note can be heard at all hours of the night;
during the day they may be seen feeding in large flocks,
generally out of sight of land. They do not fly round