568 



Petrel Procellaria. This peculiar genus in which the nostrils 

 are not placed at the sides of the beak, but form two tubes upon 

 its upper ridge embraces, according to Seebohm, about a hundred 

 species. All the birds are oceanic in their habits, severing all con- 

 nection with the land as soon as the duties of the breeding season are 

 finished, and passing the rest of their existence exclusively on the 

 wide oceans of all the divisions of the globe. Eight of the species 

 may be considered as European, five of which visit the neighbour- 

 hood of Heligoland 



375. Fulmar [EISSTURMVOGEL]. 

 PROCELLARIA GLACIALIS, Linn. 1 



Procellaria glacialis, Naumann, x. 589. 

 Fulmar. Dresser, viii. 535. 



Petrel fulmar. Temniinck, Manud, ii. 802, iv. 505. 



The gales of autumn almost annually bring this bird to Heligo- 

 land. For the most part only solitary individuals are met with, 

 but in some years larger numbers occur, as for instance, in 

 December 1873, when seventeen were shot between the llth and 

 14th of the month ; on that occasion they were swarming round 

 the fishing-boats at sea, about eight miles from the island ; and 

 amongst them was one uniformly dark greyish-brown (dunkel 

 graubrauri) individual of the size of a Herring Gull. 



In November 1879 these birds again occurred in extraordinarily 

 large numbers, ten, for example, having been shot on the 9th. Lestris 

 pomarina also was represented in unusual abundance ; L. buffoni 

 was observed repeatedly, and on the 27th of December I obtained a 

 Procellaria pelagica. In my journal for that year I find the fol- 

 lowing remark at the close of November : ' Never before so many 

 L. pomarina and Procellaria glacialis as this autumn.' 



Breeding colonies of these birds are found on both sides of 

 Davis Strait, in Iceland, St. Kilda, the Faroes, Spitzbergen, Nova 

 Zembla, the Kurile Islands, and on Prince Albert Land in Arctic 

 America. 



376. Great Shearwater [GROSSER STURMVOGEL]. 

 PROCELLARIA MAJOR, Faber. 2 



Great Shearwater. Dresser, viii. 527. 



Puffin majeur. Temininck, Manuel, iv. 507. 



In Reymers' time, when the smaller species, P. anglorum, still 

 occurred here in abundance, that coUector once shot one of the larger 



1 Fulmarus (jJacialis (Linn.). - Puffinus major, Faber. 



