30 PllOCELLARIID^. 



Petrel of 1858. The thanks of this Society, and of natural- 

 ists generally, are due to Mr. Hartcup for the opportunities 

 he has afforded for a thorough inspection (with permission 

 to photograph it) of this unique specimen ; and having, 

 myself, first obtained the confirmatory opinions of Pro- 

 fessor Newton and Mr. Osbert Salvin, it was exhibited by 

 the latter at a meeting of the Zoological Society on the 

 16th of May, 1882."* 



There appears to be no well-authenticated instance of 

 the occurrence of the Dusky Shearwater on the Continent of 

 Europe, nor in the Mediterranean, for Prof. H. H. Giglioli 

 does not include it in the list of his rare birds obtained in 

 Italy, and, as already mentioned, the bird to which the name 

 of P. ohscuriis has frequently been applied is merely a form 

 of the Manx Shearwater. The nearest haunts of the Dusky 

 Petrel appear to be in the vicinity of the Canaries, Madeira, 

 and perhaps the Azores. Mr. Edward Vernon Harcourt, to 

 whom the Author was indebted for a specimen of the bird 

 and its egg, has particularly referred to this species in his 

 published Sketch of Madeira (pp. 122 and 165). Eight or 

 nine species of the birds of this family breed on, or fre- 

 quent, the Desertas, a group of small islands about eighteen 

 miles east from Madeira. " The Dusky Petrel is a very 

 tame bird, and will live upon almost anything ; my bird 

 would climb up my trowsers by its beak and claw^s to obtain 

 small portions of food ; it runs along the ground on its 

 belly, and uses its curious-shaped bill in climbing up the 

 rocks. Those I had in my possession alive, were some of 

 them caught with fish-hooks baited with meat, by the Portu- 

 guese, and some taken by the hand in the day-time from 

 underneath stones, where they hide from the light. The 

 egg, and they lay but one, measures one inch and seven - 

 eighths in length, by one inch and three-eighths in breadth, 

 rather smaller at one end than at the other, and pure white."! 

 The dimensions of an egg taken by Mr. Hurrell on the 



* See Proc. Zool. Soc. 1882, p. 421. 



f The passage within quotation-marks does not appear to be in the above 

 work, and was probably communicated to the Author by letter. — [Ed.] 



