320 Capt. G. E. H. Barrett-Hamilton on the 



XXX. — Remarks on the Flight and Distribution of the Alba- 

 trosses of the North Pacific Ocean. By Capt. Gerald 

 E. II. Barrett-Hamilton, F.Z.S. 



I have been much interested in reading Captain Hutton's 

 paper on Albatrosses in ' The Ibis ' for January (pp. 81 to 88), 

 inasmuch as I have had many opportunities of observing 

 the two species (Diomedea nigripes and D. albatrus) which 

 frequent the North Pacific Ocean. The following notes may 

 therefore be considered worth printing as a supplement to 

 that writer's remarks. 



Captain Hutton is much to be congratulated upon the 

 success of his photographs, a success which none can more 

 fully appreciate than those who, like myself, have wasted 

 plate after plate in the attempt to obtain a picture of the 

 flight of an Albatross. 



The Black-footed Albatross, D. nigripes, called by the 

 sailors the " Gooney " * was a constant feature of a 

 voyage which I made from San Francisco to Yokohama in 

 June 189G, excepting only in latitudes south of 23° 29' N., 

 where it was very scarce. Again, when running north from 

 Hong Kong through the China Seas, in May 1897, I first 

 observed the Gooney on the 22nd of the month near the 

 Heachu Islands, where several were seen in about latitude 

 28° 41' N., longitude 122° 11' E. A white-rumped individual 

 was noticed on the same day at a distance of about 4£ hours 

 run from Wohsung, and another on the 23rd as Ave neared 

 the Japanese coast. Northwards the range of this bird ends 

 far south of that of D. albatrus, and it can be but rarely 

 that it occurs in Kamschatkan waters. On my way south 

 from Petropavlosk to Hakodate, between the 31st of August 

 and the 7th of September, 1897, the first individual — one witli 

 a white forehead — was not noticed until noon on the 3rd of 

 September. We were then somewhere off Staten Island, one 



* The term" Gooney" is, like other sailors' names for birds, not 

 necessarily of very accurate application. Moseley applied it to one of the 

 large white Albatrosses (D. exulans). See 'Notes of a Naturalist,' &c. 

 new e.l. 1892, p. 148. 



