1026 SYSTEMATIC SYNOPSIS.— TUBINARES. 



PHOilBE'TRIA. (Gr. cpoif:ir]Tpia, phoibetria, a soothsayer, presager.) Black Albatross. 

 Bill comparatively slender, struugly couipressed, with sharp culmen ; side of under mandible 

 with a long colored groove. Fruntal feathers forming a deep acute re-entrance on culmen, 

 and a h)ng acute salience on side of lower mandible. Nostrils low and strict. Tail cuneate, 

 contained twice in length of wing. Plumage uniformly dark. One species. 

 P. fuligino'sa. (Lat. fuUginosa, sooty. Fig. 704.) SooTY Albatross. Eyebrow Al- 

 batross. Bill with shape and outline of feathers as above said ; chord of culmen 4.00-4.50 ; 

 height of bill at base 1..50, at hook 1.00; width at base 0.75 ; from feathers on side of upper 

 mandible to tip 3.50, ditto lower mandible 2.50. Length 36.00 ; extent 80.00; wing 20.00- 

 22.00; tail 10.00-11.00, graduated 3.50-4.50; tarsus about 3.00; middle toe and claw 4.75; 

 outer ditto 4.50; inner ditto 4.00. Plumage ordinarily uniform sooty-brown; quills and tail 

 blackish with white shafts ; eyelids white; bill black, with long yellow groove ; feet pale or 

 flesh-color, drying yellow. In some cases the plumage lightens to a clearer, more ashy-gray 

 coloration on various parts. The head and neck frequently washed with rusty-yellow. Egg 

 white, minutely dotted at the larger end, 4.00 X 2. GO. Pacific and Southern oceans at large; 

 off west coast of North America to Oregon. 



Family PROCELLARIID^ : Petrels. 



Nostrils united in one double-barrelled tube laid horizontally on the culmen at base. 

 Hallux present, though it may be minute. Five or six groups of Petrels may be distinguished, 

 although they grade into one another ; all but one of them are abundantly represented on our 

 coasts. The Fulmars are large gull-like species (one of them might be taken for a Gull were 

 it not for the nostrils), usually white with a darker mantle, the tail large, well formed of 14- 

 16 feathers, the nasal case prominent, truncate and more or less emarginate at the end, with a 

 thin partition which hardly reaches to the end of the case; the end of the under mandible is 

 not hooked like the upper, the gonys being short, straight or scarcely concave, and rather as- 

 cending than descending. They shade through the genus Daption into an exotic group of saw- 

 billed genera; and all these con.stitute the subfamily FuLMARiN^E. The group of Petrels of 

 which the genus (Estrelata is typical embraces a large number of medium-sized species, chiefly 

 of Southern seas, in which the bill is short, stout, strongly hooked, with prominent nasal case ; 

 the tail rather long, usually graduated, 12-feathered. The Shearwaters {Puffinus) have the 

 bill longer than usual, comparatively slender, with short low nasal case, obliquely bevelled off 

 at end ; partition between nostrils thick and under as well as upper mandible hooked at the 

 end ; tail usually short and rounded ; wings extremely long ; feet large. All the foregoing 

 have basipterygoids, and share some other osteological characters ; whence they are sometimes 

 associated as a family PufflnidcB apart from ProcellariidcE ; and at any rate, the groups repre- 

 sented by the genera (Estrelata and Puffinus form a subfamily Puffininje, as distinguished 

 from Fulmarince, and from any of the two following groups, which have no basipterygoids, 

 and which have the 2d or even the 3d primary longer than 1st. Such are the elegant little 

 *' Mother Carey's chickens " or Stormy Petrels (Procellaria proper and its relatives) ; marked 

 by their small size, slight build, and other characters ; their flight is peculiarly airy and flick- 

 ering, more like that of a butterfly than of ordinary birds ; they are almost always seen on 

 wing, appear to swim little if any, and like other Petrels gather in troops about vessels at sea, 

 often following their course for many miles, to pick up the refuse of the cook's galley. Some 

 of these, as the species of Oceanites, are remarkably distinguished, in fact unique in the family, 

 by having only 10 secondaries, long legs of somewhat grallatorial character, the tarsal envelop 

 with fused scutella, flat obtuse claws, and hallux exceedingly minute. Thus the Stormy Petrels 

 furnish two more subfamilies, Procellariin^ and Oceanitin^, the latter of which is the 

 most distinct division of the whole family. 



