The Zoologist — February, 1866. 101 



the eg:ging season brought us an enormous eg^, wbich we took for an abnormal speci- 

 men of the guillemot's egg, or, as they are locally named, the ' picked-billed murr.' 

 This, however, the man strenuously denied, saying it was the egg of the 'king and 

 queen murr,' and that it was very rare to get them, as there were only two or three 

 'king and queen miirrs' ever on the island. On being further questioned he said ihey 

 were not like the ' picked-bills,' but like the ' razorhilled raurrs' (i.e. the razorbilled 

 ank); that they were much larger than either of them; and he did not think they 

 could fly, as he never saw them on the wing nor high up the cliflfs like the other birds, 

 and that they, as he expressed it, ' scuttled' into the water, tumbling among the 

 boulders, the egg being only a little way above high-water. He thought they had 

 deserted the island, as be bad not seen them or an egg for (I believe) fifteen 

 years till the one he brought to us ; but that they (i.e. the people of the island) some- 

 times saw nothing of them for four or five years, but he accounted for this by sup- 

 posing the birds had fixed on a spot, inaccessible to the eggers from the land, for 

 breeding purposes. The shell of the egg we kept for some years, but unfortunately it 

 at last got broken. It was precisely like the guillemot's egg in shape, nearly, if not 

 quite, twice the size, with white ground and black and brown spots and blotches. We 

 have never, however, met with bird or egg since, but as the island has become since 

 that time constantly and yearly more frequented and populous, it may have per- 

 manently deserted the place. The man has been dead some years now, being then 

 past middle age, and I think he had been an inhabitant of the island some twenty-five 

 or thirty years. He spoke of the birds in such a way that one felt convinced of their 

 existence, and that he himself had seen them, but he evidently knew no other name 

 for them than 'king and queen murrs,' wbich he said the islanders called them 

 ' because they were so big, and stood up so bold-like.' In colour they were also like 

 the 'razorbilled murr.' Nobody, he said, had ever succeeded in catching or 

 destroying a bird, as far as he knew, because they were so close to the water, and 

 scuttled into it so fast. The existence of these birds bad been traditional on the 

 island when be came to it, and even the oldest agreed there were never more than two 

 or three couple. He himself never knew of more than one couple at a time." 



As anything bearing npon the history of a bird now most probably extinct is of 

 interest I thought you would like to have these notes for insertion in the ' Zoologist.'— 

 Murray A. Mathew; Weston-super-Mare, December 4, 1865. 



Little Auk at Liskeard. — A little auk was brou!,'ht to me on Wednesday last, shot 

 the day before : a bird of last year, not in very good plumage. — Stephen Clogg ; East 

 Looe, Liskeard, January 9, 1866. 



Forktailed Petrel near Salisbury. — Last month I had a specimen of the forktailed 

 or Leach's petrel {Thalassidroma Leachii) given to me: it was found on the 25th of 

 November, at East Grinstead, a village about six miles from Salisbury, supposed to 

 have flown against the electric telegraph wires, as it was discovered near the railway 

 embankment with its wing broken; the bird was in excellent condition and in good 

 plumage. The above is the second petrel of the same species that I have obtained in 

 this neighbourhood ; the other was picked up on the 27th of October, 1859, by a rail- 

 way porter, about two miles from this city, on the Great Western Railway, having met 

 with a similar fate. — Henry Blackmore ; Salisbury, January 6, 1866. 



Forktailed Petrel at Penzance.— Dming the severe gale which raged here on 

 Saturday, the 25th of November, a forktailed petrel was found in an exhausted state 



