28 procellariidj:. 



Society on the 7tli of June, 1853, as shown by the Minutes 

 of that date. 



In 'The Zoologist' for 1858 (p. 6096), Mr. Henry 

 Stevenson recorded the aj)pearance in Norfolk of a Shear- 

 water which he believed at the time to be an example of 

 this rare straggler to the shores of Great Britain, but the 

 specimen was lost sight of, and has only recently been dis- 

 covered. Mr. Stevenson's account has lately been published 

 in the Transactions of the Norfolk and Norwich Naturalists' 

 Society, iii. (pp. 467-475), and from it the following ex- 

 tracts are taken : — 



" My original notes on this interesting bird may be thus 

 summarized. About the 10th of April of the above year it 

 was found dead by a gamekeeper on the Earsham Estate, 

 situated close to the south-eastern boundary of Norfolk, and 

 within a mile of the well-known town of Bungay in Suffolk.* 

 Captain Meade, who at that time hired the Hall and the 

 shooting, brought the bird, in the flesh, to the late Mr. 

 John Sayer, birdstuffer, of St. Giles, Norwich, who at once 

 observed its marked difference in size from any Manx 

 Shearwaters he had ever seen. Being from home, myself, 

 at the time, I did not examine the bird in a fresh state ; 

 but I saw it within a week of its being stufted, and its 

 resemblance to the figure of the Dusky Petrel in the third 

 edition of Yarrell's ' British Birds,' and in the supplement 

 to the second edition (1856), struck me forcibly at first 

 sight ; confirmed, to a great extent, by the comparison of 

 its measurements (though a mounted specimen) with the 

 description given of the species by that author. 



" It proved, on dissection, to be a male in very poor con- 

 dition, and probably had been driven so far inland by a 

 gale, and met its death through coming in contact, at night, 

 with a tree or some other object, having a wound on one side 

 of the head as if from a violent blow. It showed no ap- 

 pearance of having been shot at ; and the feathers, except 

 on the spot mentioned, were clean and unrufiled ; but the 



* Its flight inland, therefore, from the coast would probably have been between 

 Lowestoft and Southwold. 



