074 A. E. Verrill — The Bermuda Islands. 



It has long been thought, but without any evidence, that " Gurnet 

 Head Rock" (pi. lxxix, fig. l) was one of its breeding places, and 

 from its isolation and inaccessibility, the only place where it might 

 have continued to live long after it had disappeared elsewhere. 



Perhaps this was partly due to a misunderstanding of the name, 

 which, as I have elsewhere shown, does not refer to a bird but to a 

 fish. (See pp. 454-6 for the history of this name.) 



Mr. J. L. Hurdis in 1849, visited this rock, which is a small pre- 

 cipitous island, situated off Castle Harbor, and found there the nests 

 of a shearwater (doubtless Audubon's shearwater) in the crevices of 

 the rocks. He therefore concluded that he had found and identified 

 the long lost cahow. His identification has been accepted by other 

 later writers on the ornithology of the Bermudas, apparently with- 

 out any adequate consideration of the facts stated by the early 

 writers from personal observation. Among others, Newton, in his 

 Dictionary of Birds. 1890-93, has adopted the same view, but with- 

 out any additional evidence and without critical discussion of the 

 records. 



Mr. John T. Bartram, a resident of Bermuda, after long experience 

 in collecting the birds and their eggs, concluded (1878) that the 

 original Cahow was extinct, and that the Pimlico was the dusky 

 shear-water (Puffinus Auduboni). Capt. S. G. Reid (1884) was 

 inclined to adopt Bartram's opinion, but suggested that the Cahow 

 might have been one of the larger Shearwaters, still found there 

 occasionally, but in his formal list he put it under P. obscurus,= 

 Auduboni. Bartram was doubtless correct in this case. 



Governor Butler and the Rev. Lewis Hughes stated that a boat 

 could go to its breeding places and get a load of the bird and its 

 eggs in a short time (see also Strachy's account, above). This was 

 apparently done only in the night. Therefore the islands visited must 

 have been near at hand and easily accessible, with safe landings, even 

 in winter, when the eggs were sought. Gurnet Head Rock does not 

 fulfill any of these conditions. It is several miles from St. George's, 

 then the chief settlement and capital ; it stands isolated outside all 

 the other islands, so that it is exposed to the full force of the sea on 

 all sides, and in December and January the sea is here always boister- 

 ous; it has no place where a boat can safely land, unless in nearly 

 calm weather and by daylight ; its sides are formed by nearly per- 

 pendicular, exceedingly rough, high cliffs, which can hardly be 

 scaled without risk of loss of life or limbs, unless by means of ropes 

 and ladders. Moreover, the top is of very small area and almost 



