168 OKIUIXAL MEMBERS. 



nhere examples of this bird were last seen. Here tliey 

 remained two mouths, in vaiu waitinj^ for weather when a 

 landing on these distant and dangerous rocks would be prac- 

 ticable. The country around possessed but few attractions 

 for the ornithologist ; but Wolley Avas indefatigable in seeking 

 for information from the mouths of persons who had formerly 

 -visited the Skerries, and was successful in procuring from 

 them many valuable and interesting particulars relating to 

 this bird. A considerable number of bones of the species, 

 found at various places along the coast, were also collected, 

 and these, together with the intelligence just mentioned, 

 were the only results of the expedition worth recording here ; 

 for, owing to the constantly unsettled state of the weather, 

 not a single opportunity presented itself when it would have 

 been in any degree possible to reach the rocks. After a 

 hasty trip to the celebrated Geysers, Wolley returned to 

 England, calling on his way home, as he had done on his 

 outward voyage, at the Faeroes, where he not only renewed 

 his former acquaintance with many of the inhabitants, but 

 obtained further useful informatiou respecting the subject to 

 which he was devoting himself. 



Soon after his arrival in England Wolley began to find 

 his general health, which had hitherto been exceedingly 

 ;^ood, failing, without any apparent reason. He suffered 

 from languor, at times to a most painful degree, and his 

 former energy seemed to have departed from him. This did 

 not, however, prevent his going to the meeting of the British 

 Association held at Leeds in September. Here he read two 

 papers : one, " On a fresh Form of Crystallization which takes 

 place in the Particles of Fallen Snow under intense Cold,^'' 

 being the same subject on which he had remarked two years 

 before at Christiania, and which another winter in the north 

 had enabled him to study more particularly; and a second, 

 entitled '^ Observations on the Arrangement of small Stones 

 in certain bare Levels in Northern Localities.-'' He was 

 subsequently present at the Field-meeting or the Tyneside 

 Naturalists' Club, lield at Marsden, October 22nd, bemg the 

 last time he was to attend any scientific assembly. The 



