from the Ethiopian Region. 283 



to pull about in a boat and secure specimens of the various 

 pelagic birds that visited us. I found the mouths and throats of 

 Thalassidroma melanogaster full of a dull ruddy spawn, which 

 floated on the surface of the sea all round us in large blood-red 

 patches. I ascribe to it the phosphoric glare of the water, which, 

 on still, dark nights, makes these seas so luminous ; and I should 

 also fancy that in the daytime its appearance would very likely 

 give rise to the numerous reports of fancied shoals that are 

 constantly being brought to the Cape, and which on investi- 

 gation are invariably found to be false. On the 9th of October 

 a strong westerly wind sprang up, which, in a few days, blew us 

 along the southern extremity of the African continent into lat. 

 32° S. and long. 43° E. ; during the whole of the distance we 

 were accompanied by large numbers of Cape-Pigeons and Black- 

 bellied Petrels, sometimes as many as fifty of each species being 

 in sight at one time, while we also saw every day three or four 

 specimens of the Wandering, Common, and Black Albatros, as 

 well as the large Black Petrel. We were now approaching the 

 south end of Madagascar and the Mo9ambic channel ; and on 

 the 19th, when we had arrived at the 27th parallel of south 

 latitude, all the Albatroses and Petrels left us, the little T. mela- 

 nogaster penetrating a few miles further to the northward than 

 the others. I did not, however, see a single Procellaria aquinoc- 

 tialis ; and I only can account for this by supposing that they 

 had all gone to the south to breed. On my voyage from Eng- 

 land, it was in this latitude that I first noticed the Albatros 

 and the large Petrel, and when returning from Zanzibar I again 

 fell in with them within sixty miles of the same place; from 

 these facts, confirmed by the answers made to inquiries of other 

 sailors, I am led to infer that this is their extreme northern 

 range. 



These pelagic birds appear to be influenced by the instinct 

 of migration, which seems to control, in a greater or less 

 degree, the motions of nearly all birds; for Procellai-ia capensis 

 retires entirely from Cape latitudes for breeding- purposes be- 

 tween the months of November and March, while P. (pquinoc- 

 tialis must start a month before that period and return some- 

 what earlier. P. glacialoides I only look on as an accidental 



