TRISTAN DA CUNHA. 123 



smaller than G. nesiotis, and differs from it in having finer legs 

 and a longer beak. This is, however, hardly probable, since 

 the Tristan species occurs at Gough Island. 



The family of Gallinididce is remarkably widely spread, and 

 one of these birds is in several instances the inhabitant of some 

 isolated island group ; several occur thus in the Pacific. This is 

 curious, since one would at first perhaps think these birds bad 

 flyers, but they are not, and are not uncommonly met with on 

 the wing at sea far from land, just as we met with Water-rails 

 between Bermuda and Halifax. 



Sitting on the tree-tops with the thrushes were numerous 

 " noddies " of the same two species as those of St. Paul's Bocks. 

 It was strange to see birds wdiich one had met with on the 

 equator living in common with boobies, here mingling with 

 Antarctic forms. The noddy however ranges far north also, even 

 occasionally to Ireland. 



The whole of the peaty ground underneath the trees in the 

 Phylica woods is bored in all directions with the holes of 

 smaller sea birds, called by the Germans " night birds," a Prion 

 and a Puffinus. 



The burrows that these birds make are of about the size of 

 large rats' holes. They traverse the ground everywhere, twisting 

 and turning, and undermining the ground, so that it gives way 

 at almost every step. A further account of these birds and their 

 habits, will be found in the account of Kerguelen's Land, in 

 which island they abound. 



I went along the beach, and through a second wood towards 

 the waterfall, where w T as the hut of the Germans, and their 

 potato ground. A flock of thirty or forty predatory gulls 

 (Stercorarius Antarcticus), were quarrelling and fighting over 

 the bodies of penguins, the skins of which had been taken in 

 considerable numbers by our various parties on shore. The 

 Skua is a gull which has acquired a sharp curved beak, and 

 sharp claws at the tips of its webbed toes. The birds are 

 thoroughly predaceous in their habits, quartering their ground on 

 the look-out for carrion, and assembling in numbers where there 

 is anything killed, in the same curious way as vultures. 



They steal eggs and young birds from the penguins when 



