220 



PHTRHL GROUP 



up to the close of last century, one taken in Valentia Harbour, Kerry, 

 in May 1853, and the other picked up dead near Bungay, Suffolk, in 

 April 1858. A third example was taken alive in Kent in November 

 1905. This species is a native of the Australian seas, whence it 

 wanders in summer over the Atlantic Ocean as far as Madeira, and 

 occasionally straggles still farther northwards. Neither the young in 

 first plumage nor the chick in down appears to be known. 



Sootv Shearwater ^^"'-^^ mistaken for the immature condition of the 



(Pufflnus 2-riseus) !^'"^<^t shearwater, or as a dark phase of the adult 



of the same, the sooty shearwater is now known to 



be a distinct species, mainly differing from the former b\' a slight 



inferiority of size '18 in place of 19 inches in lengthj, by the dark 



SOOTV SIII"..\inV.\ IKK. 



brown under surface of the bod>', and by the legs being blackish on 

 their outer and lilac-grey on their inner sides. 



Breeding in the southern hemisphere, especially in New Zealand 

 and the Chatham and Auckland Islands, this shearwater is only a 

 summer-visitor to the North Atlantic and Pacific, at which time, of 

 course, its haunts in the Antarctic are held in the grip of winter. 

 This southern breeding-habitat, it may be mentioned, affords strong 

 confirmatory evidence of the theory that the great shearwater also 

 nests in the southern hemisphere. The dusky shearwater has been 

 obtained as far north in the western hemisphere as the Kurile Islands, 



