GENUS 95. PROCELLARIA, PETREL. 



SPECIES. P. PELAGIC A* 



STORMY PETREL. 



[Plate LX. Fig. 6.] 



Arct. Zool.No. 464. Le Petrel; ou I'Oiseau tempete, PLEnl. 993. 

 BEWICK, n, 223. PEALE'S Museum, 3034. 



THERE are few persons who have crossed the Atlantic, or 

 traversed much of the ocean, who have not observed these soli- 

 tary wanderers of the deep, skimming along the surface of the 

 wild and wasteful ocean; flitting past the vessel like Swallows, 

 or following in her wake, gleaning their scanty pittance of food 

 from the rough and whirling surges. Habited in mourning, and 

 making their appearance generally in greater numbers previous 

 to or during a storm, they have long been fearfully regarded by 

 the ignorant and superstitious, not only as the foreboding mes- 

 sengers of tempests and dangers to the hapless mariner; but as 

 wicked agents, connected, some how or other, in creating them. 

 " Nobody," say they, "can tell any thing of where they come 

 from, or how they breed, though (as sailors sometimes say) it 

 is supposed that they hatch their eggs under their wingSAS they 

 sit on the water." This mysterious uncertainty of their origin, 

 and the circumstances above recited, have doubtless given rise 

 to the opinion so prevalent among this class of men, that they 

 are in some way or other connected with that personage who 

 has been styled the prince of the Power of the Air. In every 

 country where they are known, their names have borne some 



* Procellaria Wilsonii, BONAPARTE, Journal dead. Nat. Sc. Ph. vol. in, p. 231. 

 It is not the P. pe/agtca; of course the synonymes quoted by our author 

 do not belong to this bird. 



