340 THE NESTS AND EGGS OF 



Family PROCELLARIID^. Genus PuFFiNUS. 



GREAT SHEARWATER. 



PuFFiNUS MAJOR, F. Fabcr. 



(British : Summer visitor during the period of the Antipodean 



winter.) 



There can be no doubt whatever that this species is a 

 bird of the Southern Hemisphere, and the fact, to my 

 mind, is absolutely proved by the following circum- 

 stances. The nesting haunts of all Petrels that breed 

 in the Northern seas are now fairly well known (especially 

 in the Atlantic), but no resort of the Great Shearwater 

 has been discovered. In the Migration of Birds I 

 placed too much reliance upon Messrs. Baird, Brewer, 

 and Ridgway's very circumstantial statement that this 

 Shearwater bred in Greenland, but subsequent research 

 has led me to reject it. This species evidently spends 

 the period of the southern winter in the Northern Hemi- 

 sphere, and after rearing its young in still unknown 

 places in the Southern Seas, retires north to spend a 

 second summer with us. The bird is well known in the 

 North Atlantic during that period, and has been ob- 

 served with great regularity to arrive at the fishing 

 grounds off the coasts of New England and British 

 North America in May, and to remain until October or 

 November, when it retires to its home in the Southern 

 Hemisphere to breed. Of the probable thousands of 

 individuals of this species examined by Captain J. W. 

 Collins, caught at these fishing grounds, not one showed 

 any traces of breeding f Again, this Shearwater has been 

 observed at Tierra del Fuego and off the Cape of Good 

 Hope. The reason it has not been observed more 

 widely and commonly in the Southern Seas is because 

 it is collected in a few chosen resorts, and at this season 

 is very nocturnal in its habits ; during its sojourn in the 



