6 CALIFORNIA ACADEMY OF SCIENCES [Proc. 4TH Ser. 
Latham’s descriptions are vague, for he did not possess in a 
high degree the gift of recognizing the distinguishing charac- 
ters of species. In consequence, some of Gmelin’s species 
founded on Latham’s descriptions are indeterminable. In the 
present paper but ten are admitted. Of the specimens de- 
scribed by Latham, only one is now in the possession of the 
British Museum (cf. Sharpe, Hist. Coll. Nat. Hist. Depts. 
Brit. Mus., Vol. II, pp. 79, 172). However, the bird draw- 
ings of Cook’s voyages, long known as the Banksian draw- 
ings, are preserved in the British Museum, and together with 
Solander’s manuscript and Forster’s descriptions shed a side 
light upon the identity of the Gmelinian species under review. 
It should be noted that Latham did not limit the scope of his 
General Synopsis to classification and nomenclature. Under 
“place and manners’ he included the geographic range and 
habits of the species. 
In 1816 and 1817, Louis Jean Pierre Vieillot reviewed the 
group in the Nouveau Dictionnaire d'Histoire Naturelle 
(Tomes I and XXV, under Albatros and Pétrel), following 
closely in the footsteps of Gmelin and Latham. Leach’s 
Petrel and the White-bellied Petrel are formally introduced 
into technical nomenclature. Three years later, in 1820, ap- 
peared Dr. Heinrich Kuhl’s Beitrége zur Kenntniss der Procel- 
larien in part first of his Beitrage zur Zoologie und vergleichen- 
den Anatomie. Twenty-seven species and nominal species of 
petrels and one diving petrel are treated in this monograph. 
The Capped Petrel and Wilson’s Petrel receive technical 
christening, unwittingly, however, for Kuhl attributed the 
designation of the former to Forster and of the latter to 
Banks, basing his identification upon the Banksian drawings. 
James Francis Stephens in 1826 in Volume XIII of Shaw’s 
General Zoology instituted two genera and provided a tech- 
nical name for the Slender-billed Fulmar. He also adopted a 
generic name (Pachyptila) proposed by Johann Karl Wilhelm 
Illiger in 1811 in his Prodromus Systematis Mammalium et 
Avium. As a whole, Stephens’s treatment of the group falls 
short of that by his predecessors. 
John Gould early became interested in the group. In Vol- 
ume II of his Handbook to the Birds of Australia (1865), 
he remarks on page 421: “Having paid much attention to 
