( 197 ) 

 e. Puffinns obscurus assimilis Gould. 



Puffinm assimilis, Gould in Proc. Zool. Soc. 1837. p. 156 ; id. Birds Ai(stralia,Yn. PI. LIX. (1848); 



Salvin, Cat. B. Brit. Mus. XXT. p. 384 (partim, specimens 2 to rf'). 

 P. niigii.e, Bonaparte Consp. Ar. II. p. '205 (1857) {ex Solander M.S.). 



This form inhabits the New Zealand and Australian seas; but we do not yet 

 know exactly where its limits are in the north, towards the seas inhabited by the 

 true P. obscurus. The forehead is very light. Its under tail-coverts are invariably- 

 pure white. The outer webs and about 3 or 4 mm. of the inner webs of the first 

 jirimaries are dark, the rest of the inner web mostly pure white, this colour sharply 

 defined against the blackish brown. Above with a rather bluish tint. Sides of 

 head as in P. bailloni. This form is very distinct, and we have before us twenty 

 skins from the New Zealand seas. 



In the literature on all these forms we find the most correct remarks from 

 Messrs. Finsch & Hartlanb, but unfortunately they applied the name P. obscurus 

 to the Atlantic and Indian Ocean form, mistaking Christmas Island near the 

 Fanning group for Christmas Island south of Java! The want of knowledge or 

 scarcity of wit shown in using names which are already used elsewhere for islands, 

 towns or lands, have often caused similar errors. The American writers (Ridgway 

 chiefly) have also distinguished between the various forms of these Pu/fiiii, but they 

 have never given a review including all of them. Salvdn's treatment in the 

 Catalogue of Birds cannot be followed in our opinion. The distribution he ascribes 

 to P. assimilis — viz. Australian and New Zealand seas and North Atlantic Ocean, 

 while he allows P. obscurus to occur between these countries, at Bourbon, the 

 Seychelles, and again on the coasts of Great Britain, the West Indies and Pacific 

 Ocean — would be a most peculiar one. The material in the British Museum does 

 seem to lead to Salviu's view, but we are not prepared to accept it. While the 

 skins from near Madeira and the Canary Islands in the British Museum have a 

 great deal of white on the inner webs of the primaries and most closely resemble 

 the true P. assimilis, we du uot think that they agree in all the characters alluded 

 to above, and we have some from the Canary Islands which are so dark on the 

 inner webs of the primaries that they would be better united with P. obscurus than 

 with P. assi^nilis, while those from the Cape Verd group are all much darker on 

 the primaries than any P. assimilis. Those from the Madagascar region (lieunion, 

 etc.), are more like P. obscurus than like P. assimilis, but we think they belong to 

 neither of the two forms strictly, and we have provisionally united with them the 

 North Atlantic form (see anted). 



f. Puffinus auricularis Townsend, 



of which we have received an adult female caught by K. H. Beck in the Pacific 

 Ocean at lat. 2V 10', long, ll.j 38', differs from all these forms at a glance by its 

 much larger size. 



y. Puffinus opisthomelas Coues, 



of which we have in the Tring Museum a tine adult male from Monterey, California, 

 is still much larger than P. auricularis, and the axillaries are blackish towards their 

 tips and tipped narrowly with white. 



These two latter forms we consider worthy of specific rank, while all the others 

 cannot be looked upon as more than slightly separated subspecies. 



U 



