366 PUFFININ^E. 



on which occasions tliey siiaw such a lot of the glossiness of the under surface of the wing as to 

 make that part seem almost white. I am told that the 21st March is the established date for the 

 men to go to the islands in order to capture the young of these birds, which they do every year, 

 so that the flight recorded above would hardly have been a mi<;ration from the breeding-place. 

 When they arrive at the breeding grounds there is, each night at dusU, an immense tumult of 

 cries and the beating of wings as those birds return to the islands that have been away all day. 

 A man standing in the line of flight, and making repeated blows with a stick in the air, can soon 

 lay a pile of birds dead at his feet, so great is the concourse. The young when captured are 

 full of oil, and when held up by the feet it drips out of their beaks. The mode of preserving 

 is to kill, boil, scald and afterwards to salt them. The old birds are not used, being 

 considered too tough.'" 



From Tasmania Mr. E. D. Atkinson wrote me as follows in June, igii: — "As to sea 

 birds, I cannot find any of the Petrels excepting the White-faced Storm Petrel and the Short-tailed 

 Petrel or ' Mutton Pird ' ( Fuffuius tenuirostris), although I have tried hard. I did not send notes 

 on the latter, as they have been so much written of that nearly all I could say would be a mere 

 repetition. One matter may not have been noted. Cattle have for some years past been 

 introduced on one of the islands in the Furneau.x Group, which formerly ranked perhaps first 

 as a ' bird ' island, and is now one of the poorest. On one portion of the island cattle have 

 trampled down the ground so hard that the birds are unable to scratch out the holes to lay their 

 eggs in ; the conse(pence is they deposit them on the surface of the ground, giving it an 

 appearance at a distance of some miles of a patch of snow, but having no burrows to hatch in 

 they do not return for that purpose. Thus thousands of eggs are wasted every season. This, 

 I think, goes a long way to prove that these birds return respectively year after year to the same 

 localities for breeding purposes, and probably those which ncrw waste their eggs each successive 

 season hatched them in the usual manner in this particular spot, previous to the introduction of 

 cattle on the island." 



Only one egg is laid for a sitting, although in very rare instances two eggs may be found in 

 the same burrow, doubtless the result of two birds laying in the same tunnel. Typically they 

 are oval in form, but elongated and swollen ovals are not uncommon. Naturally when the eggs 

 of a species are so extremely comnion, when a large series is examined some abnormal eggs are 

 found ; they are pure white, the shell being close-grained, smooth and lustreless. Although 

 smooth shelled, they have a finely frosted appearance, and not the greasy smoothness of a Duck's 

 egg when held in the hand and the fingers passed over its surface. Like all Petrel's eggs they 

 have that peculiar mubky odour, which they retain for many years after they have been emptied 

 of their contents. Six eggs, selected from over a hundred specimens collected at Phillip Island, 

 Victoria, on the 26th November, 1883, measure as follows: — Length (A) 2-Si x i-g8 inches; 

 (6)2-95 ^ rg inches; (0)2-87 ^ 1-9 inches; (D) 2-97 x 1-75 inches; (E) 2-7 x 1-S3 inches; 

 (F) 2-75 X 1-83 inches. Two fairly typical specimens taken on the same date measure : — Length 

 (A) 2-67 X 1-73 inches; (8)2-7 ^ i'83 inches. An abnormally elongated specimen in the 

 Australian Museum Collection, taken on Chapel Island, in the Furneaux Group, Bass Strait, 

 by Mr. Joseph Gabriel, on the 26th November, 1893, measures: — Length 3-04 x 1-6 inches. 

 A normal sized specimen taken on the same date measures: — Length 2-73 x 1-8 inches. Six 

 eggs taken from burrows in the sand hummocks, on the back beach, Rhyll, Phillip Island, 

 Victoria, on the 27th November, 191 1, measure respectively: — Length (A) 2-78 x 1-87 inches; 

 (6)2-87 "^ 1-82 inches; (0)2-83 x 1-78 inches: (D) 2-82 x i-8i inches; (E) 2-77 x 1-83 

 inches; (F) 2-71 x 1-97 inches. An egg taken from the oviduct ot a bird picked up dead on 

 Burton's Beach, on the 28th November, 191 1, measures: — Length 2-81 x 1-83 inches. 



