18 



The Canadian Field-Naturalist. 



[Vol. XXXY 



winter had a niunber of fully formed eggs 

 taken from it. Other individuals relieved 

 this condition by depositing their eggs in 

 the water in the tub which confined them. 

 Unnatural surroundings are almost sure to 

 produce unnatural behavior. 



L. L. Snyder, 

 Royal Ontario :\Iuseum of Zoology, 



Toronto, Ont. 



Hornby's Petrel. — Through the gen- 

 erosity of Dr. L. C. Sanford, of New Haven 

 Conn., the Victoria Memorial Museum has 

 lately come into the possession of a sjie- 

 t-iraen of Hornby's Petrel, Oceanodroma 

 hornhyi. 



For many years it has onl}' been known 

 from the type specimen in the British 

 Museum obtained by Admiral Hornby, 

 previous to 1853, and has for long appear- 

 ed on the Hypothetical List of the Amer- 

 ican Ornithologists Union on the basis of 

 its vague locality, "N. W. America", as 

 given in the Catalogue of Birds of the 

 British Museum. 



In the Auk, XXXIV, 1917, p, 466, H. C. 

 Oberholser advocates its installation as a 

 fully accredited American bird on the 

 grounds that at the time of its capture 

 Admiral Hornby had his headquarters on 

 Vancouver Island and there is little doubt 

 that it was obtained in adjacent waters. It 

 is seen that tlie probability of its being a 

 ( 'anadian species is suggested by the same 

 evidence. It should likely be placed on our 

 h.vpothetical list until further substantiated 

 by specimens. 



There are few Noi'th American birds of 

 which we know so little as we do of the 

 Petrels and their allies. Many nest in the 

 southern hemisphere on lonely rocky 

 islets lo.st in the vast oceanic wastes. With 

 such limited breeding areas the total num- 

 ber of some of them must be very small 

 and subject to accidental vicissitudes. The 

 introduction say of rats from a wrecked 

 shij) might and ])robably has before now 

 wiped out entire species or left them on 

 the verge of extinction. Pigs, goats and 

 cats have had such effects on many such 

 insuiai" habitats. Few of these stations are 

 ports of call, some are inaccessible ex(;ept 

 in the calmest weather, and their dangerous 

 I)ossibilitics and lack of resources cause 

 iriariners to give them a wide berth ; hence 

 their bif ta has seldom been investigated. 



Petrels are purely pelagic and spend 

 their lives far at sea in vast irregular 

 wanderings, making no regular migration 

 except at such times as the duties of re- 

 production call them to these out-of-the- 

 way shores. They flit across the pathway 

 of shipping and are seen in passing by the 

 deep-water sailor; but by the coaster or 

 the long-shoreman they are seldom noted. 

 The former has no time to stop, investigate 

 or collect, and the latter no opportunity. 

 Of many species it is only the accidental 

 straggler that normally comes to the eye 

 of science, and probably a greater propor- 

 tion of species are known by individual 

 specimens in this group than in any other 

 class of birds. 



So it remained with Hornby's Petrel 

 until R. H. Beck, collecting for Dr. San- 

 ford eighty miles off the Peruvian coast 

 in 1913, liappened to come upon a number 

 and obtained a series of them, of which 

 this specimen is one. 



The generosity of this donation to our 

 National collections indicates that Dr. 

 Sanford regards ornithology as more than 

 the amassing of specimens ; he refused to 

 take advantage of his opportunity to re- 

 tain the material and make his cellection 

 unique in the possession of this rare spe- 

 cies. Whilst this spirit is not rare enough 

 amongst naturalists to excite remark it is 

 none the less worthy of approbation, es- 

 pecially as there are instances where less 

 breadth of view and generosity have been 

 evident. 



P. A. Taverner. 



Notes on the Behaviour of the Chip- 

 munk — No. 2. — While in camp at Lake Mis- 

 sanag, Frontenac Count}', Ontario, during 

 part of August and September 1920, I was 

 able to add a few notes to my record of the 

 behaviour of the Chipmunk (Tamias stria- 

 tj(s hjsteri). The Chipmunk with the very 

 short tail, upon which I made the observa- 

 tions recorded last year {Ca)i. F.-Nat., Vol. 

 XXXIII, ]). 92), had disappeared from 

 her haunts of last year, nor was she to be 

 found anywhere in the vicinity. This was 

 a decided disappointment, as I had hoped 

 to find out something in regard to the 

 duration of memory in this species. The 

 burrow in Avhi(;h another individual had 

 lived the previous fall was also deserted. 

 However, seeing a Chii)munk about a large 



