626 Letters, Extracts, Notices, ^c. 



]\Jr. S. Owen Webb, of Streetley Hall, who forwarded it, 

 under the impression that it was a species of Gull, to 

 Mr, Travis, taxidermist, Bury St. Edmund's, for preservation. 

 The bird, when captured, was uninjured and in very good 

 condition, bore no marks of captivity, but seemed simply 

 exhausted. On hearing of it through the Rev. G. Julian 

 Tuck, Mr. J. H. Gurney and I examined it, and asked 

 Mr. Travis to forward it to Mr. Howard Saunders, who 

 submitted it to Mr. Osbert Salvin, when it was pronounced 

 to belong to the above species. 



It is, I believe, the first instance of the occurrence of an 

 Albatross in the British Isles, though a bird of the same 

 species was shot in the Fseroe Islands (Ibis, 1896, p. 136), 

 and others are referred to by Mr. J. A. Harvie-Brown, as 

 well as by Mr. H. L. Popham ('Zoologist,' 1894, pp. 337- 

 338)j as having been met with in that same portion of the 

 Atlantic Ocean. In the present specimen the superciliary 

 mark is almost absent, and is merely represented by an 

 indistinct tinge of grey on the feathers over and in front of 

 the eye, in which respect it seems to resemble the one killed 

 in the Faeroes. There is another peculiarity which, strange 

 to say, is not mentioned in the British Museum Catalogue 

 (vol. XXV. p. 447), and that is that the whole of the outer 

 web of the outside tail-feather is white or whitish, a very 

 conspicuous feature when the tail is spread^. 



The following note was made by Mr. Gurney and myself 

 from the specimen shortly after it was mounted: — 



Inches. 

 Length, following outline of mounted specimen along the 



back, from tip of beak to end of tail 26"3 



Wing, closed, from bend to tip 17'0 



Bill, along ridge to tip, following the curve 4-2 



Tarsus, in front 24 



Tarsus, behind 2*9 



Expanse {teste Mr. Travis), about 84-0 



Number of tail-feathers twelve, 



* [After this letter had been sent to press, we found that an almost 

 identical notice had been supplied to ' The Field,' and appeared on August 

 28th.— Edd.] 



