572 Transactions. — Miscellaneous. 



September. At certain times in the year the birds become 

 extremely fat. In February a fat royal penguin will weigh 

 141b. ; a king penguin will weigh at least 301b. It seems to 

 be pretty well established that all the four kinds of penguins 

 migrate and pass a portion of the year somewhere to the 

 southward, but there are no regular observations on the point. 

 I was not able to ascertain what kind of food was available 

 for the birds at the time I was there : all the birds examined 

 had nothing but a brown slime in them as food. 



Shags were often seen flying by or sitting quietly on the 

 rocks. On our first walk along the coast to the south we 

 came on a breeding-place where there were numbers of all 

 ages, and by carefully crawling up the rocks we managed to 

 secure three specimens by hand. On sending down a man the 

 next day to procure some more he found them much more 

 wary, and had to shoot those he required. The species is one 

 common to the islands to the south of New Zealand (Phalacro- 

 corax carunculatus) . Some distance to the north of the 

 Lusitania hut there is a beautifully arranged breeding-place of 

 tins shag, with about thirty nests arranged in terraces on a 

 huge rock, each nest being on a little pedestal, the accumula- 

 tion of years. 



Ossifraga gigantea.- — The huge and ungainly "nelly," 

 handsome and even noble when wheeling round and round in 

 the air, is on the land but a lumbering robber, and usually to 

 be found skulking around the breeding-places, trying to pick 

 up a young penguin or wood-hen. The breeding-places are 

 upon the bleak moorlands on the top of the island. In one 

 that I saw there w T ere about fifteen or twenty young birds 

 almost ready to fly, and out of the hundred or more birds in 

 the breeding-place there must have been at least a dozen pure 

 or partial albinoes. The whole surface of the island is covered 

 with the bones of small Prions, swallowed and then ejected by 

 these giant petrels. 



Ocydromus. — Some years ago Mr. Elder turned out some 

 Maori-hens from New Zealand, and these have increased and 

 multiplied in a most extraordinary way. On any part of the 

 coast (with the exception of the extreme north) they mav be 

 seen feeding on the small Crustacea and mollusca amongst 

 the kelp. They might well be called kelp-hens, as their 

 colouring is so assimilated to the shades of brown taken by 

 the w T et and dry kelp that it is only when they are moving or 

 are on the shingle that they can be distinguished. It was a 

 very easy matter to knock over with stones enough of these 

 birds to make a most excellent stew, and no fear need ever be 

 entertained of any castaways or inhabitants starving on Mac- 

 quarie Island, as these birds alone would be quite sufficient to 

 provide plenty of nourishment. They are just as inquisitive 



