156 PRINCE EDWARD ISLANDS. 



swampy, and covered with grass. On the drier parts were 

 numerous troops of from twenty to thirty King Penguins, and 

 in one place a smaller rookery, hut as far as I saw without 

 brooders. 



There was here a shallow freshwater lake, on which some 

 young albatrosses were swimming. I ascended the slope 

 inland towards the snow, going up the gentle slope of the 

 modern-looking lava flow already referred to. The ground 

 was very boggy, and let one sink in sometimes almost up to 

 the middle. There were numerous Great Albatrosses' nests 

 scattered about, but they did not extend more than 100 feet 

 above sea level, and hardly anywhere as high up as that. 



Far above the level of these, I found a young bird, I think 

 the young of the Giant Petrel, in a nest scarcely raised from 

 the ground ;. the young bird vomited up the contents of its 

 stomach and gush after gush of red oily fluid at me as I stirred 

 it up with a stick. All the petrels vomit oil in this way, and 

 the white ones thus are apt to spoil themselves for stuffing in 

 a most provoking way, before one can get their mouths and 

 nostrils stuffed with cotton wool. 



The valley, in which the lava flow up which I was going 

 lay, was bounded to the south by a cliff about 200 feet high, 

 composed of a series of more ancient lava flows. The lower- 

 most of these showed a more perfect columnar structure than 

 the uppermost, and the columns of the lower layers were much 

 smaller than those of the upper. A small stream ran down in 

 the narrow depression, between the border of the lava stream 

 and the talus slopes of the cliff. In the bed of this were at 

 intervals small beds of a compact red earth, forming almost a 

 rock, deposited by the stream, and consequently in places cut 

 through by it and exposed in section. 



High up, at about 500 feet elevation, were some four or five 

 Sooty Albatrosses {Dioinedea fuliginosa, the Piew or Pio of 

 sealers), soaring about the tops of the cliffs and probably 

 nesting there. This bird is continually to be seen about cliffs 

 and higher mountain slopes, and seems never to nest low down 

 like the MoUymauk and Gony. 



In holes in the banks at this elevation, a Prion was ex- 

 tremely abundant, but it was also pretty abundant down about 

 sea level. Its peculiar angry cry, somewhat like the snarling 

 of a puppy, uttered as it hears footsteps about its hole, is very 

 puzzling at first as one listens to it, coming up from the ground 

 at one's feet, but is unmistakable and quite unlike the cry of 

 any other of the Procellaridce which we met with ; I see, how- 

 ever, that Mr. Eaton in his notes, cited by Mr. R. B. Sharpe, 

 says, that " the cry of the petrel Halobcena canika is exactly 



