2296 TUBE-NOSED BIRDS, DIVING BIRDS, PENGUIN. 



commences, they rush in from all quarters, and frequently accumulate to many 

 thousands. -They then occupy the greasy track of the ship, and being audaciously 

 greedy, fearlessly advance within a few yards of the men employed in cutting up 

 the whale." Highly gregarious during the breeding season, the fulmars then col- 

 lect on the turfy ledges of the St. Kilda cliffs in thousands. The single white egg 

 is laid either in a slight nest of dried grass, or on the bare ground, and although 

 the birds sometimes excavate a hollow of a few inches deep in the turf, they as 

 often nest on its surface. 



Nearly allied to the fulmar is the silver-gray petrel ( Thalassoica 

 Allied Genera g i ada i oides } o f t h e Pacific and Southern Atlantic, distinguished by its 

 more slender beak, in which the nasal tubes are shorter and more depressed, with 

 their upper border concave. This species extends nearly as far south as the Ant- 

 arctic pack ice, where it is replaced by the snowy petrel (Pagodroma nivea], a 

 pure white species of the size of a pigeon, with a short and weak bill. The "Cape 

 hen" (Majaqucus tequinoctialis) and the spectacled petrel (M. conspicillatus} are 

 larger southern species, of the size of the fulmar, with blackish-brown plumage. 

 The beak is longer than in the latter, with shorter nasal tubes, of which the two 

 apertures look directly forward. While the Cape hen is wholly blackish brown, the 

 spectacled petrel has characteristic white bands across the head and throat. 

 Sh Nearly cosmopolitan in their distribution, the numerous group of 



medium-sized dark colored petrels known as shearwaters and included 

 in the genus Puffinus, are characterized by the length and slenderness of their 

 beaks, in which the short and depressed nasal tubes open by two separate orifices, 

 generally directed obliquely upward. The wings are long and pointed, with the 

 first quill the longest; the graduated tail consists of twelve feathers, and the first 

 toe is rudimentary. 



Shearwaters may be divided into two groups, according as to whether the un- 

 der parts are white, or are dusky like the back. Among the better-known repre- 

 sentatives of the former group we may mention the cinereous shearwater (P. kuhli) 

 of the Mediterranean, Western Europe, and the East Atlantic, characterized by its 

 stout beak, circular nostrils, and brownish-gray upper plumage. The great shear- 

 water (P. major], of the Atlantic Ocean generally, which measures eighteen inches 

 in length, and is an occasional autumn visitor to the British Islands, is a member of 

 the same group, distinguished by its more slender beak, in which the nostrils form 

 longitudinal ovals; the general color of the upper parts being sooty grayish brown, 

 with paler tips to the feathers of the back. The commonest British representative 

 of the group is the smaller Manx shearwater (P. anglorum], which measures only 

 fourteen inches in length, and has a uniformly blackish upper plumage, without 

 pale tips to any of the feathers; it frequents the whole of the North Atlantic, 

 although more abundant on the eastern than on the western side. Another species 

 of this group is the dusky shearwater (/>. obscurus), which is smaller than the last, 

 with a more slender beak, and a deeper black to the upper plumage. Common to 

 both the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, this species has been obtained from such 

 widely remote regions as the Bahamas, the Galapagos islands, and New Zealand. 

 Lastly, we may take the sooty shearwater (P. griseus) as an example of the second 



