124 Letters, Announcements, ^c. 



Oakfiekl, Reigate, Oct. 1865. 



Sir, — Having read with much interest Captain F. W. Hut- 

 ton^s Notes in the last number of 'The Ibis' (for July 1865), 

 " On some of the Birds inhabiting the Southern Ocean/' I ob- 

 serve that he remarks (p. 280), with respect to the Albatros {Dio- 

 medea exulans), " It is more difficult to collect sufficient evidence 

 of their rarity from November to March, as few voyagers visit 

 the regions they inhabit at this season, and fewer still take no- 

 tice of the birds/' Upon this hint I venture to send you a few 

 remarks, based on my own observations during a voyage from 

 Pernambuco round Cape Horn to Valparaiso, in December 1855 

 and January 1856. 



No doubt Albatroses are comparatively scarce in mid-ocean 

 at this season of the year ; for, as nearly as I can recollect, we 

 did not fall in with the first until nearly 45° S., and that was a 

 Sooty Albatros (Z). fuUginosa) — a species which appeared to be 

 both scarcer and far more wary than D. exulans. From the 

 latitude above mentioned the latter were our constant com- 

 panions, and we seldom had fewer than twenty to thirty round 

 the ship — a tolerable number considering that this was the 

 height of the breeding-season. The captain of the good clipper 

 ' Atrevida,' who had doubled both Cape Horn and the Cape of 

 Good Hope some score of times, informed me that Albatroses 

 ranged further north in the Eastern than in the Western Atlantic. 



On the 4th of January 1856 we ran, under a favourable wind, 

 through the Straits of Lemaire, between Staten Land and Tierra 

 del Fuego, rounded the Horn in about 59° 30' S., and in rather 

 less than a fortnight after leaving the latitude of Stanley, Falk- 

 land Islands, were safely moored in Valparaiso. Such a rapid 

 run was naturally most unfavourable to Albatros-catching, and 

 our success with hook and line was nil. Our efforts to procure 

 specimens by firing at the birds and attempting to drop them 

 on deck were equally unavailing. I could not, therefore, identify 

 any specimens of D. melanophrys ; but, although many of the 

 birds we saw were much marked with brown, and smaller than 

 some of the snowy-white examples we met with further south, 

 I imagine they all belonged to D. exulans. Neither could I 

 identify D. brachyura; but on a later occasion, between Valpa- 



