132 Mr, Tom Iredale on 



Avliicli was then written on the drawing in pencil, probably at 

 the same time by Solander himself, 



Wiiether the skin was preserved or not I cannot say, but 



I conclude not. No specimen can be traced, even in 



literature, which can honestly be said to have been procured 



on this First Voyage, After their arrival back, Solander 



certainly worked np the Petrels, making comparisons with 



the literature, and haviug the matter on the slips rewritten in 



clean form on foolscap sheets. It is this rewritten clean batch 



which ]\Ir. Mathews has traced and which' accounts for the 



missing slips in Solander's book of " Aves^' afore-mentioned. 



After the foolscap pages Avere prepared, the rough slips seem 



to have been destroyed. By means of these beautiful 



diagnoses which Mr. Mathews has reprinted in his 'Birds of 



Australia ' any student of the Procellariiformes can work at 



Gmelin^s species and also read, with reasonable clearness, 



the monographs of Kuhl, Gould, and Bonaparte. Previously 



this was quite an impossibility, and in publishing these 



copies Mr. INIathews has conferred the greatest benefit 



possible upon the extra-London worker, who can now decide 



as to the correct attachment of the hitherto enigmatic '' Sol. 



MS." names. Regarding such matters, I always write from 



|;he view-poiut of one who has endeavoured to do lasting 



work when living at the Antipodes, deprived of much 



literature and served with scant material. Those who have 



the wealth of literature and access to the vast collections of 



the British Museum are apt to overlook such matters, and 



do not consider how grateful Antipodean workers are for 



'' the scraps that fall from the table,'" I can also speak with 



feeling, as some years ago I was confronted with the problem 



of what was '■' Pi'oceJlaria alba'' Gmelin, which appeared in the 



synonymy of the Kermadec Petrel. After much trouble and 



research I arrived at the conclusion that the drawing which 



served for the basis of that name, and upon which appeared 



pencilled " P. sandaliataj" had been prepared from a specimen 



of (FiStrelata arminj'utiiana Giglioli and Salvadori. I then 



found that Salvin had arrived at the same result, whereas 



Mr. Mathews' reproduction of the beautiful diagnosis of 



Procellaria sandaliata Solander shews that we were both 



