Septembeb 3, 1915] 



SCIENCE 



309 



years uncorrected. For Cory's shearwater, de- 

 scribed in 1881, was not a new bird, but an old 

 bird with a new name. Its range is not un- 

 known, and its nesting-habits and eggs have 

 long been familiar to naturalists. As I have 

 for some time suspected, as Howard Saunders 

 stated positively away back in 1889, and as 

 Godman in his " Monograph of the Petrels " 

 (pp. 94-98, Part II., 1908) has established, 

 Puffinus horealis is a synonym of Pufflnus 

 huhli, the Mediterranean great shearwater, a 

 common Old World bird which has been well 

 knovm. for generations. 



My first intimation of this fact I found in 

 Howard Saunders's " Manual of British 

 Birds," wherein, on p. Y16 (first edition), in 

 treating of the great shearwater, he remarks: 



In the Azores, as well as on the islets near Ma- 

 deira and the Canaries, the resident species is P. 

 Tcuhli (identical with P. borealis of Cory), which 

 visits the western coasts of France and the Penin- 

 sula, and is abundant throughout the Mediter- 

 ranean; the latter species is of a much paler brown 

 on the upper parts, and has a yellow-colored and 

 deeper bill. 



This was startling, since I knew that 

 Saunders was not a man for unguarded state- 

 ments ; but at the same time it seemed incredi- 

 ble that an assertion of this kind in a standard 

 bird-book should have remained unnoticed and 

 uninvestigated by American bird-men for 

 twenty years; and as Cory's shearwater still 

 held its place in all our bird-books, I was 

 puzzled. I recalled with intense regret the 

 accidental loss of a specimen of P. huhli which 

 my father and I had once collected off Sar- 

 dinia; and I set about trying to get together 

 some skins of these big pale-billed shear- 

 waters from both sides of the Atlantic, for 

 comparison. Rosenberg, in London, wrote me 

 that he had one skin only of P. huhli. I 

 meant to order this, and also to write to a bird- 

 stuffer we knew in Cagliari, Sardinia; but 

 other matters intervened, and I let the whole 

 thing slip. 



Then, hearing of Godman's " Monograph of 

 the Petrels," I supposed it a matter of course 

 that I should there find the question definitely 

 settled. Por some time I had no chance to see 



this work; and meanwhile I noticed that the 

 latest-revised bird books in America were still 

 hanging on to Cory's shearwater. Godman, 

 then, had confirmed its standing as a distinct 

 species? Apparently, this must be so. Tet 

 the fact that in all these years a large shear- 

 water breeding abundantly in the Azores had 

 not been recorded even as a wanderer from our 

 Atlantic coast seemed in itseK an exceedingly 

 suspicious circumstance. Strong-winged sea- 

 rovers like these should find no barrier between 

 the " Western Islands " and the New England 

 fishing-banks. 



My doubts continued until, in June of this 

 current year, 1915, I was enabled through the 

 kindness of the secretary of the Boston Soci- 

 ety of Natural History to examine Godman's 

 monograph. There I find the matter satis- 

 factorily settled, in conformity with Saunders's 

 statement and my own misgivings. Under the 

 head of Puffinus huhli, Godman (Part H., 

 p. 96) says : 



Specimens from the eastern coast of North 

 America have been described as Fufp-nus horealis 

 by Mr. C. B. Cory, but I can not find any difference 

 between individuals from the coast of Massachu- 

 setts and others from the Atlantic islands. 



In his synonymy of P. huhli he includes 

 Cory's P. horealis. 



It would seem unnecessary, not to say pre- 

 sumptuous, for us to question this determina- 

 tion, or wait to make further comparison of 

 specimens before admitting that our " Cory's " 

 shearwaters are simply Mediterreanean great 

 shearwaters on their annual post-breeding-sea- 

 son pilgrimage to the fishing-grounds on the 

 western side of the Atlantic. It must be noted, 

 however, that the Azorean and Canary Islands 

 birds have been found to be subspecificaUy dis- 

 tinct from those breeding in the Mediterranean, 

 differing mainly in the smaller amount of 

 white in the lining of the outer primaries. 

 The Atlantic islands bird has been described 

 by Hartert as Puffinus huhli flavirostris,^ and 



1 The name of Puffinus flavirostris was first used 

 by Gould in 1834, for specimens of the Mediter- 

 ranean (Azorean) shearwater from the Cape Seas. 

 It appears that the species not infrequently wan- 

 ders far southwards. 



