396 THE ZOOLOGIST. 



Blue Petrel {Halobcena carulea) or the Broad-billed Prion {Prion 

 vittatus) ? These are questions the traveller is sure to ask, and 

 to which Mr. Green's book supplies no answer. What is the 

 species so common on the Southern Ocean from Cape Town to 

 East London ? Its plumage both above and below is sooty- 

 brown, without a speck of white. The sailors call it the " Cape 

 Hen." 



A book on Ocean Birds ought to be written geographically. 

 It is a mistake to arrange the species systematically. Mr. Green's 

 volume would have been much more interesting and useful if he 

 had simply told us what he has himself observed. He might 

 have added as much as he thought necessary from published 

 works, but the backbone of the book ought to have been extracted 

 from his own diary. 



The plates are artistic, and good examples of chromo- 

 lithography, but would be of greater use to travellers had they 

 been more strictly accurate. 



Mr. Green has compiled some interesting notes on the 

 Albatrosses, but the information given is at times somewhat 

 confused. On page 4 he tells us that The Albatross is Diomedia 

 exulans ; and on page 7 he adds, " the great breeding-place of the 

 Albatross is Tristan da Cunha." Then follows an account by 

 Professor Moseley of the breeding of the Albatrosses on this 

 island, which the reader naturally supposes to relate to the 

 Albatross, until the final sentence of the quotation informs him 

 that " the Great Albatross, D. exulans, also nests on Tristan da 

 Cunha." Which species of Albatross then is the Albatross of 

 Moseley ? Mr. Green does not tell us ; nor does he inform the 

 reader where Moseley's notes are to be found. The fact is that 

 Moseley, in his " Notes by a Naturalist on the ' Challenger,' " 

 p. 129, describes the breeding of the Yellow-billed Albatross, 

 Diomedia chlororhynchus (which he calls D. culminata), not on 

 Tristran da Cunha, as stated by Mr. Green, but on Nightingale 

 Island, twenty miles to the south-west. On page 6 some expla- 

 nation ought to be given of which species is meant by " the 

 Yellow-billed species (D. melanophrys)." 



On page 23, Mr. Dresser is made to say that the Fork-tailed 

 Petrel is only an Atlantic species. It is equally common in the 

 Pacific, as the next sentence — which, however, is omitted by 

 Mr. Green — states. 



