214 THE ZOOLOGIST. 
40° N. and 40°S. lat., with the exception ot the two or three 
stragglers which have wandered out of their usual limits as far 
as our coasts (vide Harting’s Brit. Birds, p. 169). I can detect 
no difference amongst the large series I have examined from 
various localities in the warmer portions of the globe, such as 
the American coasts and islands, the island of Ascension, the 
coast of Africa, including the Red Sea, the Polynesian Islands, 
Australia, and the South of Japan, and the accounts of its 
habits and nidification seem to agree. Its most noted breeding- 
place is at Ascension, where the great nesting colony known 
as “Wide-awake Fair” is one of the few attractions of that 
buge cinder-heap, and excellent accounts of it have been given by 
various visitors, the most recent being that by Dr. C. Collingwood 
(Zool. 2nd ser. p. 979—984), and the late Commander Sperling 
(Ibis, 1868, pp. 286—288). In all cases the bird seems to sit upon 
a single egg laid upon the bare ground or amongst the cavities of 
the lava or coral, according to the locality, making no nest what- 
ever, wherein it differs from the Noddies (Anous), and as soon as 
the duties of incubation are ended and the young can fly, away 
they all go to sea. Being single-brooded birds, it was natural 
to suppose that they bred but once in a year, and at tolerably 
corresponding periods in either hemisphere; still one was con- 
tinually meeting with immature specimens, whose plumage at the 
date of their acquisition was not at all what it ought to have been 
if they had been hatched at the normal periods or at those at 
which the birds had been found breeding by various explorers. 
The explanation of this apparent discrepancy was given me by 
Drs. Drew and Purchas, R.N., who had recently returned from 
Ascension, and on enquiring of Lieut. Mountjoy Squire, R.N., at 
present stationed there, the statements of my friends were con- 
firmed, viz., “that the ‘ Wide-awakes’ come up from the sea to 
breed about every eight months, or three times in two years.” 
Probably this is the case in other breeding-places, but I only know 
it as a fact of this one, and a very remarkable and interesting fact 
it is. As regards the plumage of this well-known species, it is 
hardly necessary to say more than that it is sooty black on the 
mantle, wings and tail, except outer webs of streamers; white on 
under parts and neck; black on crown and occiput, with a black 
streak from base of bill to eye, and a broad white frontal band 
from extending to a little above the eye, but not beyond il; the 
