168 PROCELLARIA PELACICA. 



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They fly with the win IT* forming an almost straight 

 xontal line with the body, tin- legs extended behind, and 

 the feet partly seen stretching beyond tin- tail. Their 

 common note of weet, weet, is scarcely louder than that 

 of a young duck of a week old, and much resembling 

 it. During the whole of a dark, wet, and boisterous 

 n i if lit, which I spent on deck, they flew about the 

 after-rigging, making a singular hoar>e chattel -inir, 

 which in sound resembled the syllables patrft tu ciik 

 cuk tu tu, laying the accent strongly on the second 

 syllable tret. Now and then I conjectured that they 

 alighted on the rigging, making then a lower curring 

 noise. 



Notwithstanding the superstitious fears of the sea- 

 men, who dreaded the vengeance of the survivors, I 

 shot fourteen of these birds one calm day in lat. 33, 

 eighty or ninety miles off the coast of Carolina, and 

 had the boat towered to pick them up. These I 

 examined with considerable attention, and found the 

 most perfect specimens as follow : 



Length, six inches and three quarters, extent, thirteen 

 inches and a half; bill, black; nostrils, united in a 

 tubular projection, the upper mandible grooved from 

 thence, and overhanging the lower like that of a bird of 

 prey ; head, back, and lower parts, brown sooty black ; 

 greater wing-coverts, pale brown, minutely tipt with 

 white; sides of the vent and whole tail-coverts, pure 

 white ; wings and tail, deep black, the latter nearly 

 even at the tip, or very slightly forked ; in some speci- 

 mens two or three of the exterior tail-feathers were 

 white for an inch or so at the root ; legs and naked 

 part of the thighs, black ; feet, webbed, with the slight 

 rudiments of a hind toe ; the membrane of the foot is 

 marked with a spot of straw yellow, and finely serrated 

 along the edges; eyes, black. Male and female differing 

 nothing in colour. 



On opening these, I found the first stomach lar 

 containing numerous round semitransparent substances 

 of an amber colour, which I at first suspected to be the 

 snawn of some fish; but on a more close and careful 



