$32 SHEA THBIEL 
of its bill. It was first made known from having been met with 
on New-Year Island, off the coast of Staten Land, where Cook 
anchored on New Year’s eve 1774.1. A few days later he dis- 
covered the islands that now bear the name of South Georgia, and 
there the bird was again found,—in both localities frequenting the 
rocky shores. On his third voyage, while seeking some land 
reported to have been found by Kerguelen, Cook in December 
1776 reached the cluster of desolate islands now generally known 
by the name of the French explorer, and here, among many other 
kinds of birds, was a Sheathbill, which for a long while no one 
suspected to he otherwise than specifically identical with that of 
the western Antarctic Ocean; but, as will be seen, its distinctness 
has been subsequently admitted. 
The Sheathbill, so soon as it was brought to the notice of 
naturalists, was recognized as belonging to a genus 
hitherto unknown, and the elder Forster in 1788 
(Enchirid. p. 37) conferred upon it, from its snowy 
plumage, the name Chionis, which has most properly 
received general acceptance, though in the same year 
the compiler Gmelin termed the genus Vaginalis, as 
a rendering of Pennant’s English name, and the 
species alla. It has thus become the Chionis alba of 
ornithology. It is about the size of and has much 
the aspect of a Pigeon ;? its plumage is pure white, 
its bill somewhat yellow at the base, passing into 
pale pink towards the tip. Round the eyes the 
skin is bare, and beset with cream-coloured pa- 
pillee, while the legs are bluish-grey. The second 
or eastern species, first discriminated by Dr. Hartlaub (Lev. Zool. 
BILL OF CHIONIs, 
from above. 
(After Swainson.) 
1 Doubtless some of the earlier voyagers had encountered it, as Forster 
(Descr. Anim. p. 330) suggests and Lesson (Man. d’Orn. ii. p. 343) asserts ; 
but for all practical purposes we certainly owe its discovery to the naturalists 
of Cook’s second voyage. By some error, probably of transcription, New Zea- 
land, instead of New-Year Island, appears in many works as the place of its 
discovery, while not a few writers have added thereto New Holland. Hitherto 
there is no real evidence of the occurrence of a Sheathbill in the waters of 
Australia or New Zealand ; but one (C. alba) was shot by the lighthouse-keeper 
at Carlingford in Ireland, 2 Dec. 1892, as recorded by Mr. Barrington (Zool. 
1893, p. 28; Proc. Zool. Soc. 1893, p. 178). Examples of this species have 
been often brought alive to this country, and the bird thus killed may well 
have escaped from confinement. 
* In the Falkland Isles it is called the ‘‘ Kelp-Pigeon,” and by some of the 
earlier French navigators the ‘‘ Pigeon blanc antarctique.” The cognate 
species of Kerguelen Land is named by the sealers ‘‘Sore-eyed Pigeon,” from 
its prominent fleshy orbits, as well as ‘‘ Paddy-bird”’—the last perhaps from 
its white plumage resembling that of some of the smaller Egrets, often so 
called. 
