Mr Grays Notes on the Manx Shearwater. 213 



sub-tropical parts of Australia, and shows tliat it possesses in 

 an eminent degree the power of suiting itself to altered 

 conditions — a po^^'e^ of the highest importance where the 

 questions of acclimatisation and domestication are being 

 considered. 



IV. Notes oil the Manx Shearwater (Puffinus angiorum). 

 By Egbert Gray, Esq., F.E.S.E., etc. 



The author, after referring to the various haunts of this 

 bird in Britain, know^n to naturalists fifty years ago, but 

 now entirely deserted, expressed an opinion that some great 

 breeding place of the species must exist in the island of Eigg. 

 Early in August of the present year he had taken ample 

 notes on the bird during a yachting cruise round the 

 Western Hebrides, and had observed immense flocks in the 

 neighbourhood of that island. On one occasion, while the sea 

 was very rough, he had observed a flock of seven or eight 

 hundred riding on the waves — many of them birds of this year 

 — w^hich, as the yacht approached, rose in a body, and flew 

 round the vessel several times in most graceful circles before 

 again settling on the water. One or two larger and much 

 darker bu-ds were observed in the flock, which the author took 

 to be the greater shearwater {Pitffimis major). After an in- 

 terval of ten days he had again seen similar flocks on passing 

 the island; but although shearwaters had been observed almost 

 daily during the cruise, from the Sound of Mull to Cape 

 AVrath, in no other quarter did they occur in such numbers. 

 The author also adverted to the circumstance that the Manx 

 shearwater was now a regular visitant to the Firth of Forth 

 in the autumn months, and that he had seen large flocks 

 swimming on the sea close to the Bass Eock for two succes- 

 sive seasons. In these flocks he had observed from fifteen 

 to twenty specimens of the greater shearwater. 



