Mr. W. T. Blanford on 'Stray Feathers.' 215 



a form of S. monacha, — both of which Mr. Hume suggests as 

 possible. No. 3, Pellorneum palustre, has been twice described 

 before, fortunately always under the same name : — first, as 

 mentioned by Mr. Hume in a foot-note, by Mr. Gould in the 

 ' Birds of Asia/ pt. xxiv. (Ibis, 1872, p. 188) ; secondly by 

 Dr. Jerdon himself, in the paper published, after his death, 

 in < The Ibis ' for July 1872, p. 300. 



Puffinus persicus is described as a new species of Shear- 

 water from the Gulf of Oman. Unfortunately I did not my- 

 self obtaii) this bird when collecting in the same seas, and 

 Mr. Hume has but a single specimen. It is very difficult, in 

 so puzzling a genus as Puffinus, to determine the affinities of 

 his bird from the description. It is said to be too small for 

 P. anglorum and too large for P. obscurus — the length of 

 the former being given by Yarrell as 15 inches, and the wing 

 9*5, whilst the corresponding measurements in the latter, ac- 

 cording to the same author, are 11 and 6'75, and in the new 

 species 13 and 7 ; but the quill-feathers not being fully grown 

 in the type example of P. persicus, it is suggested that the 

 perfect wing probably measures 8 or 8 - 25 inches. Merely 

 pausing to express my surprise that a veteran field-ornitho- 

 logist like Mr. Hume places the smallest dependence upon 

 the lengths of birds as given in European works on ornitho- 

 logy, since no one knows better than he does that these are 

 nearly always taken from dried skins, I may mention that 

 the P. obscurus of Gmelin is founded upon the Dusky Petrel 

 of Latham, Syn. vol. vi. p. 416, the length of which is given 

 as 13 inches, and which came from Christmas Island* — that 

 the wings, in two specimens of P. obscurus in the British 

 Museum, measure 7*3 and, 7*75 inches, and, in three skins of 

 P. anglorum from the Mediterranean, two have the wing 8*75 

 and the other 8 - 5 in length; specimens of P. anglorum from 

 the British Islands agree better with Yarrell' s measurements. 



* There are two islands of this name — one in the North Pacific, about 

 halfway between the Sandwich and Society Islands, the other S.W. of 

 the coast of Sumatra. It is uncertain from which Latham's tppe was ob- 

 tained ; but in either case it came from either the Indian or Pacific Ocean, 

 not from the Atlantic. 



