114 BULLETIN 121, UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM. 



It was afterwards discovered by Messrs. John T. Nichols and 

 Louis L. Mowbray (1916) that this bird is not Peale's petrel, but a 

 new and undescribed species to which they gave the name Aestrelata 

 cahoio. In their description they state that the " upper surfaces " 

 are " dark sooty, darkest on the primaries, grayish on the back and 

 nape;" and that the "forehead, lores, and underparts" are "white." 

 They also say : 



The name " cahow " was used by early settlers in Bernuula for an Aestrelata 

 abundant at Cooper's Island, a mile at the most from where the type was 

 taken and presumably of the same species. Numerous partially fossil bones 

 (including skulls) which, after comparison, we believe to belong to the form 

 here described, have been found by Mr. Mowbray in various caves in the 

 eastern end of the Bermudas, some about a half mile from where the bird 

 was taken. 



A few months later Dr. R. W. Shufeldt (1916) appears in print 

 Avith the description of a new species under the name AestreJafa 

 vociferans^ which is apparently the same bird. His description is 

 based on the study of a large collection of bones, collected by Mr. 

 Edward McGall and Mr. Louis L. Mowbraj^^ in the bird caves of the 

 Bermudas. In this interesting paper he gives us some information 

 about the former abundance and the habits of the " cahow." He 

 «ays : 



These Bermudan caves are very recent in their formation ; they certainly 

 are not, at the very limit, more than five centuries old, and maybe a century 

 or so less. My particular interest centered about the unraveling of the his- 

 tory of the famous bird long known by the name of " cahow " and by several 

 other names, -which are not necessary to enumerate here. At one time the 

 " cahow " was extremely abundant on these Bermuda Islands, and bred there 

 in untold millions at the time of the early settlers, some three centuries ago. 

 It was a nocturnal species, possessing discordant notes ; and so fearless of 

 man were these birds that they would alight on the head, shoulders, and arms 

 of any person visiting their breeding grounds. This imusual fearlessness 

 resulted in the final extermination of tlie species ; for the first inhabitants of 

 the islands, and those tliat followed them in a comparatively short period, 

 utterly destroyed the birds for food, notwithstanding their enormous num- 

 bers. All this has now become a matter of history, and one of tlie most 

 extensive contributors to it is Prof. Addison E. Verrill, of the present faculty 

 of Yale University. There are a great many writers on the subject, and most 

 of them firmly believe that tlie cahow was a shearwater of the genus Pnfflnus; 

 in other words, that it was a bird still to be found on the Atlantic Coast, and 

 known as Audubon's shearwater {P. Iherminieri) . Others, however, doubted 

 this, and believed the bird to be an extinct petrel ; and there wei*e other opin- 

 ions in regard to the matter, all of which have been fully set forth in my 

 memoir on the subject, which will presently be published by the American 

 Museum of Natural History. 



In one of the three stalactites collected by Mr. Mowbray in Crystal Cave 

 he discovered three feathers embedded about an eighth of an inch in the 

 calcite, one of which was brown and the other two white. With respect to 

 these Mr. Mowbray wrote me on the 10th of February, 1916 : " The finding 



