552 PUFFINID^E 



following counties : Cornwall, Devon, Dorset, Sussex, 

 Norfolk, Yorkshire, Northumberland; and at North Berwick 

 in Scotland. 1 Among recent captures may be mentioned : 

 Two adults a male and female shot October 2nd, 1901, 

 off the coast of Scarborough, and two others, one a female, 

 the other of doubtful sex, from the same locality, obtained 

 respectively on October 1st and 4th, 1904 (W. J. Clarke, 

 ' Zoologist,' 1901, p. 477, and ibid., 1905, p. 74). 



In Ireland the Sooty Shearwater has been obtained on 

 four occasions and seen several times. A bird was procured 

 off the Kerry coast (near the Little Skellig Island), in 

 August, 1853, and identified by More (' Zoologist,' 1881) ; 

 a second was taken off Bangor, co. Down, on September 

 29th, 1869; a third was obtained off Achill Island on May 

 22nd, 1901, and is in the Science and Art Museum, Dublin; 

 and on September 13th, 1901, Mr. H. Becher shot four 

 from among numbers of this and the last species between 

 the Blaskets and the Skelligs ; two of these he gave to 

 the above Museum (' Irish Naturalist,' 1905, p. 43). Mr. 

 Ussher, in his work on the ' Birds of Ireland,' p. 391, 

 states that both Sooty and Great Shearwaters were seen on 

 several occasions by Mr. Becher when yachting along the 

 south-west coast of Ireland in September, 1899 ; again, in 

 the ' Irish Naturalist ' for 1901, p. 42, the same writer 

 publishes a set of notes received from Mr. Becher, when 

 cruising in September, 1900, off the coasts of Kerry, Cork 

 and Waterford, where he found these birds " surprisingly 

 numerous." Except for two days Sooty and Great Shear- 

 waters were seen daily during a sail of seven days. On 

 September 14th, ten or twelve Sooty Shearwaters were 

 noticed, chiefly near the Fastnet Kock. On September 16th 

 Mr. Becher estimates that he saw about half a dozen of 

 both Sooty and Great Shearwaters, the birds " passing at 

 intervals all day." The next day seven or eight Sooty and 

 rather more Great Shearwaters, were seen. Again on 

 September 9th, 1901, Mr. Becher met with about ten or 

 twelve of this, and a flock of hundreds of the last species 

 between Cape Clear and Mizen Head (' Irish Naturalist/ 

 1905, p. 43). The foregoing facts indicate that these two 

 species of Shearwaters are more plentifully distributed 

 along the south-western coast of Ireland than has been 

 previously supposed. 



1 Recently, viz., October 16th, 1902, a Sooty Shearwater was captured 

 n Stromness Harbour, this being apparently the first record from the 

 Orkneys. (Eagle Clarke, Ann. Scot. Nat. Hist., 1903, pp. 25, 26.) 



