154 '^^^^ Irish Naturalist. 



record is latitude 44° S., 260 miles off the coast of Patagonia, 

 which is very remarkable for a wader ; 44° S. lat. is also about 

 the northern limit of drift ice, which the Sheathbill is said to 

 frequent, and from which it takes one of its trivial names (Ice- 

 bird). Is it altogether improbable that a bird which has been 

 found occasionally so far from land, should wander still 

 further from its usual limits ? and once having reached the 

 West Indies, it would be no more unlikely to fi}^ over the 

 Atlantic than any other of our American visitors, and the 

 natural tendency would be to seek a climate vSimilar to its own 

 for breeding purposes. If the Sheathbill had escaped from 

 any European aviary, the fact would probably have been 

 published before now, and Mr. W. Cross, Liverpool, the 

 well-known importer of wild animals, has not had one alive for 

 several years. 



Moreover, it is not a bird a sailor would bring home b}' 

 choice, as it would require more liberty than the finches and 

 parrots which are usually to be seen in the forecastle of a 

 merchant ship, while if left at liberty to run about the decks 

 it would probably soon escape, and if pinioned would be 

 drowned in the first heavy sea, as happens to many Guillemots, 

 Razorbills, and even occasionally Fulmars off our coast. The 

 ships which visit antarctic islands are usually small vessels, 

 such as sealers and whalers, from which a Sheathbill would 

 have ample opportunities of escape. If on the other hand it 

 flew on board a large merchant ship on a passage round Cape 

 Horn, the majority of seamen would do their best to secure it 

 for the pot. I write from experience, having seen the breast 

 of an Albatross served up by the apprentices on a first-class 

 London merchant ship. Of the many birds that came on board 

 our ship during my voyage round the world, no attempt was 

 made to tame any except a few finches captured in European 

 waters. 



I will not quote as similar instances the many petrels and 

 terns, whose breeding limits are antarctic and circumtropical, 

 as they are purely oceanic, some of them breeding in the 

 extreme south, as Wilson's Petrel, the Sooty Shearwater, and 

 the " Cape Pigeon," which is supposed to have occurred in 

 Ireland, but which Mr. A. G. More and Mr. E. Williams 

 inform me was too hastily accepted on faith of evidence, which 

 at that time seemed sufiicient, but which has since been 



