68 Transactions. — Zoology. 



a lustrous coal-black, and are wonderfully expressive in their 

 dark facial setting, with a white eyelid underneath. The legs 

 and feet are greenish-grey with flesh-coloured webs, shaded 

 with brown towards the outer edges. 



Diomedea fuliginosa, (The Sooty Albatros.) 



At a former meeting of this Society I exhibited a down- 

 covered nestling of this species, received from the Auckland 

 Islands. The carpenter on board the "Hinemoa," who is a 

 very intelligent man and has collected many good specimens 

 at the Islands, informs me that this species of Albatros — unlike 

 the others, which place their nests on the ground within easy 

 reach — selects for nesting purposes the ledges of rocks on the 

 face of the cliffs, and often in the most inaccessible places. 



Diomedea culminata. (The Grey-headed Albatros.) 



This species, I am credibly assured, breeds on the Snares. 

 My informant has supplied me with a number of eggs. They 

 are very elliptical in form, and vary slightly in size, an average 

 one measuring 4in. in length by 2-oin. in breadth. Some are 

 uniform creamy-white ; others have the larger end more or 

 less splashed with extremely fine dots of reddish-brown, 

 becoming confluent in some places and formiug an indistinct 

 zone. 



Diomedea regia. (The Eoyal Albatros.) 



Since writing my paper on this new species of Wandering 

 Albatros, I have had an opportunity of comparing its nestling 

 with that of Diomedea exulans. The former, as already 

 recorded, is entirely covered with down of the purest white ; 

 the nestling of Diomedea exulans, on the other hand, has a 

 covering of light-grey down, changing to white on the head. 



The distribution of these Albatroses on their breeding- 

 grounds is very curious. Although MoUymawks are plentiful on 

 the Snares and on tile Bounty Islands, neither Dioviedca regia 

 nor D. exulans is to be found there. On Campbell Island, 

 where D. regia reigns supreme, D. exulans is never seen. On 

 the Auckland Islands, with the exception of the small colony 

 of D. regia mentioned in a former paper, all the breeding birds 

 belong to D. exulans. On the Antipodes Island, again, there 

 are no Diomedea regia, and the breeding birds of the other 

 species are, for the most part, in the dark-grey plumage with 

 white face and throat. One of the officers of the " Hinemoa ' 

 told me that he turned many of these dark-coloured birds off 

 the nest, and always found an egg, which seemed to him far 

 more elliptical in form than the ordinary albatros's egg. He 

 noticed moreover that sometimes a very dark bird was paired 

 with a much lighter one. 



