Io6 INACCESSIBLE ISLAND. 



The family of GaUiniiHda is remarkably widely spread, and 

 one of these birds is in several instances the inhabitant of some 

 isolated island group ; several occur thus in the Pacific. This 

 is curious, since one would at first perhaps think these birds 

 bad flyers, but they are not, and are not uncommonly met 

 with on the wing at sea far from land, just as we met with 

 Water-rails between Bermuda and Halifax. 



Sitting on the tree-tops with the thrushes were numerous 

 " noddies " of the same two species as those of St. Paul's Rocks. 

 It was strange to see birds which one had met with on the 

 equator, living in common with boobies, here mingling with 

 Antarctic forms. The noddy, however, ranges far north also, 

 even occasionally to Ireland. 



The whole of the peaty ground underneath the trees in the 

 Phylica woods is bored in all directions with the holes of 

 smaller sea birds, called by the Germans " night birds," a Prion 

 and a Puffinus. 



The burrows that these birds make are of about the size of 

 large rats' holes. They traverse the ground everywhere, twist- 

 ing and turning, and undermining the ground, so that it gives 

 way at almost every step. A further account of these birds 

 and their habits will be found in the account of Kerguelen's 

 Land, in which island they abound. 



I went along the beach, and through a second wood towards 

 the waterfall, where was the hut of the Germans, and their 

 potato ground. A flock of thirty or forty predatory gulls 

 {Stercorarius Antarcticus), were quarrelling and fighting over 

 the bodies of penguins, the skins of which had been taken in 

 considerable numbers by our various parties on shore. The 

 Skua is a gull which has acquired a sharp curved beak, and 

 sharp claws at the tips of its webbed toes. The birds are 

 thoroughly predaceous in their habits, quartering their ground 

 on the look-out for carrion, and assembling in numbers where 

 there is anything killed, in the same curious way as vultures. 



They steal eggs and young birds from the penguins when 

 they get a chance, but their principal food here appears to be 

 the night birds, especially the Prions, which they drag from 

 their holes, or pounce on as they come out of them. The place 

 was strewed with the skeletons of Prions, with the meat torn 

 off them by these gulls, which leave behind the bones and 

 feathers. 



The Antarctic Skua is very similar in appearance to the large 

 northern Skua, of which a figure is given opposite in default of 

 better. The two species were at first considered by naturalists 

 to be identical ; they differ, however, especially in the structure 

 of the bill. The Skua is of a dark brown colour, not unlike 



