1889. ] LAWRENCE, Breeding of Puffinus audubont, etc. 19 
AN ACCOUNT OF THE BREEDING HABITS OF 
BRUINS AUDUBON VN THE ISLAND OF 
GRENADA, WEST INDIES, WITH A NOTE 
ONVZABLNAIDA TK OBELPLS. 
BY GEORGE N. LAWRENCE. 
I HAVE received a letter from Mr. John G. Wells in which he 
writes as follows: ‘‘I had an outing on Easter Monday, and was 
fortunate enough to procure a bird new to our fauna, a description 
of which I enclose, and skins go by book post, which I trust will 
reach you safely, and that I shall soon have the pleasure of read- 
ing your decision on them.” 
The birds sent proved to be Puffinus audubonz. The following 
letter from Mr. Wells, dated Grenada, April 23, 1888, gives an 
account of his finding and procuring specimens of it while breed- 
ing, and also some facts connected with its life history. 
‘‘About eight or ten years ago numbers of dried birds used to be brought 
in to the market at Greenville for sale ; they were young birds and very fat. 
The men who sold them said they were the young of the ‘Diablotin,’ and 
were caught in holes, on a small island to the eastward called Mouchoir 
Quarré. I endeavored to procure a live one but without avail, and in fact 
so many improbable stories were told concerning this bird, that I looked 
upon the ‘Diablotin’ as a myth, and concluded that the dried birds were 
the young of some species of Gull. My interest in the matter has, however, 
been recently revived. On Easter Monday last (2nd April, 1888) I paid 
a visit to a small islet called Labaye Rock, about a mile off the Port of 
Greenville, a place where I had been on many previous occasions. 
On exploring the Rock, a young bird was discovered in a hole under a 
stone; it was covered with Cown; in fact it seemed like a ball of fat en- 
closed in down. One of the boatmen pronounced it to be a young ‘Diablo- 
tin’; this, as you may suppose, caused me to make a thorough search, with 
the happy result that I found an adult bird with a young one in one hole, 
and a full-grown female and one egg inanother hole. The birds on being 
brought out into the light appeared to be quite foolish, and beyond a feeble 
attempt to bite seemed to make no effort to escape. I kept them alive for 
some days; they would take no food during the day, remaining perfectly 
quiet, but at night they fed on scraps of fish, and at intervals uttered a 
peculiar cry resembling a cat howl. 
