PROCELLARIID/E. 37 



fluttering along the ground in the dark, and (if I had a lantern) easily caught them by 

 uncovering the hght and turning it on them. They flew to light upon H.M.S. * Supply ' on 

 dark nights in October, when there was snow upon the deck." At the Natural History 

 Museum in South Kensington there is a small pamphlet to be obtained, called ' Guide to the 

 Index Museum Aves (Birds),' by Sir Richard Owen. In page 2, describing the anatomy of 

 birds, he writes :— " The fore pairs of limbs are constructed for the act of flight, and beat as 

 efficiently the denser element, in the few kinds of birds in which those limbs are limited to the 

 act of diving ; in both they present the form of ' wings.' " This exactly describes the wings of 

 the Diving Petrel. Dr. Coppinger, in describing the Falkland Island species, says : — " The 

 bill is particularly broad, and of a dark horn-colour ; the breast and belly of a dull grey, and 

 the upper parts black; the tarsi and feet lavender. The l)ody is short and plump, and is 

 provided with disproportionately short wings." Speaking of this bird, Darwin says: — "It 

 off'ers an example of those extraordinary cases of a bird evidently belonging to one well-marked 

 family, yet both in its habits and its structure allied to a very distant tribe." Gould says, in his 

 ' Birds of Australia,' that " it possesses none of those vast powers of flight common to the rest of 

 the Petrels, but has the loss amply compensated for by its powers of diving, which are so great 

 that it is even said to fly under water." He calls it Pujfinuria itr matrix, and thus describes it : — 

 " Head, all the upper surface, wings, and tail, shining black ; ear-coverts, sides of the neck, 

 and flanks, dark grey ; all the under surface white ; irides very dark greyish brown ; base of 

 the cutting-edge of the upper mandible and a line along the lower edge of the under mandible, 

 blue-grey; tarsi and toes beautiful light blue; webs transparent bluish white, tinged with 

 brown ; naked pouch hanging from the chin nearly black, and, being very thin, lies in folds 

 like a bat's wing." This little Petrel completes the I'vocellariidoi that we should be likely to 

 meet with on an Australian voyage ; and as the Southern Ocean is facile princeps their great 

 head-quarters, the list includes a large proportion of the family. 



