118 BULLETIN 121, UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM. 



are known as flats, lying along the Genesee River, about forty miles south of 

 Lake Ontario, 



At the time IMr. BreAvster obtained this specimen he recorded it 

 as a specimen of Peale petrel, Pterodroma inexjjectata^ after com- 

 paring it with Peale's type of that species in the United States Na- 

 tional Museum collection. It was not until five years aferwards, 

 when he had again compared it with the type of inexpectata^ as well 

 as with the type of -fi.shen, that he came to the conclusion that the 

 three species were distinct and described his bird under the name, 

 scaled petrel, Aestrelata scalaris. 



Pterodroma fsheri., Fisher petrel, is supposed to be a bird of the 

 Pacific Ocean. There are only tAvo specimens in existence, the type 

 in the United States National Museum, collected by Mr. William J. 

 Fisher at Kodiak Island, Alaska, on June 11, 1882, and a moimted 

 specimen in the University of Washington collection in Seattle, 

 taken at Sitka, Alaska. The latter specimen, which I examined 

 on my return from Alaska in 1911, is, as I remember it, the same 

 as the bird we collected in the Aleutian Islands that summer. As 

 it appears in my published note (1918) on the subject, Dr. H. C. 

 Oberholser agrees with me in referring this and the specimen col- 

 lected by Dr. Alexander Wetmore on the Alaska Peninsular, August 

 6, 1911, to Pterodroma inexpectata {-gularis) . This leaves only the 

 unique type to represent Pterodroma fisheri^ which I believe will 

 prove to have no standing. 



Nesting. — Although the Peale petrel seems to be a fairly common 

 species in the North Pacific Ocean in summer, very little seems to be 

 known about its ranges and nesting habits. Mr. S. Percy Seymour 

 found a breeding colony of these petrels on Preservation Inlet, New 

 Zealand, which he evidently visited several times for he collected a 

 series of the birds, as well as their eggs and young, which have found 

 their way into American collections through the late Manly Hardy 

 and his family. I have recently examined 18 of these birds, now in 

 the Thayer Museum, and should judge from copies of correspondence, 

 shoAvn to me by Colonel Thayer, that Mr. Brewster pronounced 

 them, while still in the Plardy collection, as identical with his type of 

 Pterodroma scalaris; and that since then Doctor Oberholser has com- 

 pared them with Peale's type of Pterodroma gularis and pronounced 

 them identical with that species. These are significant facts and, 

 when taken in connection with the fact that Godman (1907) evidently 

 regarded Mr. Seymour's birds as gularis^ tend to prove that the two 

 species are identical. There is considerable individual variation in 

 this series of birds of which Mr. Brewster's type of scalaris represents 

 one extreme and Peale's type of gularis ahother. 



Eggs. — There are also in the Thayer collection three eggs, col- 

 lected by Mr. Seymour, on Preservation Inlet, on December 12, 1899, 



