^'°i9l^^] ALEXANDER, .lustralicni Sea I^uds. 267 



Petrels of the genus Prion in tlie British Museum; National 

 Museum, Washington; American Museum, New York; Brook- 

 lyn Museum; Buenos Aires Museum and Capetown Museum. 

 In every case where there is a series from a single locality, con- 

 siderable uniformity is apparent, and in many cases two or more 

 types can be picked out. Far the most striking is the typical 

 Broad-billed Prion from New Zealand, which can be picked 

 out at sight in any collection, and the statement made that it 

 came from New Zealand without looking at the label. However, 

 in the Capetown Museum the birds from Tristan d'Acunha show 

 a close resemblance to the tyi)ical specimens. In my opinion the 

 gap between these Broad-billed Prions and the birds found in 

 Western Australia which Mathews names P. v. missa is at least 

 as great as between these latter and P. desolatus. At any rate I 

 can support Mathews' main contention that when localities are 

 taken into account there is a constancy about the series observed 

 which plainly indicates the existence of species or at least sub- 

 .species amongst the Prions, even though a set of birds taken 

 at random may show almost every gradation from the broadest 

 bill to the narrowest. 



I am in agreement with Ferguson that it is quite impos- 

 sible to distinguish species seen at sea, though like him I have 

 constantly met with large flocks when travelling in southern lati- 

 tudes. On at least two occasions whales were seen just where 

 the flocks of these birds were most numerous, justifying the 

 sailors' name of Whalebird. Probably an abundance of plank- 

 ton is the cause of the presence of both whales and birds. 



Prion Turtur. Fairy Prion. — There is a specimen of this very 

 distinct species in the Queensland Museum labelled S.E. Queens- 

 land, but no particulars of its capture are available. 



Diomedea exulans. Wandering Albatross. — Only one of these 

 birds was seen in Australian waters after leaving Frem?intle on 

 the westward journey in March, 1920, though a few were seen 

 in the central part of the Indian Ocean. On the return journey 

 in June and July, 1921, they were seen every day from Capetown 

 to Fremantle, the last leaving us just before Rottnest Island 

 came in sight. They were numerous off the northern coast of 

 New South Wales in October, 1921, and one followed our ship 

 in through the heads of Sydney Harbour and continued to fly 

 round us for an hour or more while we were anchored in Wat- 

 son's Bay waiting for the doctor. According to Mathews' and 

 Iredale's Handbook, birds from the South Atlantic, Indian 

 Ocean, and South F'acific differ in the colour of their eyelids. I 

 have been unable to observe this, but the birds I saw when cross- 

 ing the South Atlantic appeared to have decidedly yellow bills, 

 whilst those seen in the Indian Ocean and on the coast of New 

 South Wales had rosy bills shading into yellowish at the tip. 

 All the birds seen in the South Atlantic had the whole of the 

 primaries black, whilst in tlie Indian Ocean and on the New 



